Integrated scheduling for active imaging agile satellites

Develop an integrated observation-and-downlink scheduling formulation for active imaging agile satellites that jointly models variable observation durations, the resulting data volumes, completion-time-dependent causality constraints, and transition constraints.

Background

Active imaging agile satellites can choose their observation durations, so the duration determines both the timing of an observation and the amount of data generated. In an integrated scheduling problem, this creates a coupling between imaging and downlink decisions that is absent when observation durations are fixed.

The coupling also affects completion times used in causality and transition constraints. The paper explicitly states that no existing formulation captures this combination of features.