A Scheduling System with Redundant Scheduling Capabilities

The concept of ground station networks evolved in the recent years in many different fields as a reasonable tool for satellite applications. Especially in the field of academic ground station networks, grown from small satellite projects at universities all over the world, new innovative ideas were developed to enhance the operation of small low earth orbit satellites. One important aspect, which has not been considered so far, is an essential difference between academic networks and classical ground station networks with respect to scheduling requirements . These differences are mainly conducted by the architecture and non-commercial character of academic networks, resulting in different scheduling requirements like flexibility and redundant scheduling. This work defines a mathematical description of the scheduling problem appearing in academic ground station networks, referred as the Redundant Request Satellite Scheduling (RRSS) problem. Furthermore important differences compared to the classical problem formulation are elaborated. Additionally the paper introduces a new scheduling approach tailored for the special needs of this problem.