Coordinating remote sensing for Earth observing satellites

Abstract

As the number of Earth observing satellites increases, the opportunity of observation is much enhanced. Through coordination, several satellites can observe more area than single satellite in a given time horizon. Counterwise to this advantage, the scheduling problem of observations is NP-hard in computational complexity. Although the study on satellites scheduling problem has attracted much attention for years, those proposed researches are merely concerning spot targets which can not satisfy the requirements of observing area targets. This article presents the study of a satellites coordinating system, which can effectively coordinate imaging activities of satellites to meet the requirement of observing area targets