Multi-objective evolutionary approach for the satellite payload power optimization problem

Abstract

Today's world is a vast network of global communications systems in which satellites provide high-performance and long distance communications. Satellites are able to forward signals after amplification to offer a high level of service to customers. These signals are composed of many different channel frequencies continuously carrying real-time data feeds. Nevertheless, the increasing demands of the market force satellite operators to develop efficient approaches to manage satellite configurations, in which power transmission is one crucial criterion. Not only the signal power sent to the satellite needs to be optimal to avoid large costs but also the power of the downlink signal has to be strong enough to ensure the quality of service. In this work, we tackle for the first time the bi-objective input/output power problem with multi-objective evolutionary algorithms to discover efficient solutions. A problem specific indirect encoding is proposed and the performance of three state-of-the-art multi-objective evolutionary algorithms, i.e. NSGA-II, SPEA2 and MOCell, is compared on real satellite payload instances.