Regional telecommunication satellite constellation design tradeoffs

Abstract

In this paper we proposed a new approach to design a telecommunication satellite constellation for regional coverage and aiming at determining the best trade-off between maximal earth coverage and minimum delay of the satellite communication. In this work, the nondominated sorting genetic algorithm 2 (NSGA-II) is used to generate sets of constellation designs (Pareto fronts) that show the tradeoff for two pairs of conflicting metrics. A thorough parameter analysis is performed on the NSGA-II for the constellation design problem so that the utility of the approach may be assessed and general guidelines for use established. The results reported include the approximated Pareto fronts obtained by the NSGA-II for the tradeoffs are discussed.