Mixed-integer linear programming for multibeam satellite systems design: Application to the beam layout optimization

In a society where the demand for multimedia applications and data exchange is experiencing an unstoppable growth, multibeam systems have proven to be one of the most relevant solutions for satellite-based communication systems. Though already well represented among the geostationary satellites today, there are still several unresolved design optimization challenges for these complex systems that could lead to improved performances and to better system costs. The satellite platform, the repeater, and the antennas are examples of subsystems that should be designed jointly in order to reach an optimized technical solution that fulfills the service requirements. Traditionally, such complex tasks are addressed through a decomposition of the overall system design into a sequence of smaller decision problems. In this article, we propose to rely on operations research techniques to, on the one hand, take into account explicitly the interdependencies of these decomposed problems, and on the other hand, to handle the own constraints of each subsystem and their interactions. In this paper, the focus is laid on the optimization of the beam layouts of the multibeam satellites. Indeed, in addition to being a perfect example of the aforementioned importance of dealing with subsystem constraints, this problem appears early in the chain of design of a multibeam satellite system and is therefore critical for the quality of the telecommunication system: the weaknesses of a beam layout cannot be made up for later on in the system design. For this crucial optimization phase, the strength of the methodology we propose in this paper is to use mixed-integer linear programming to incorporate explicitly technological feasibility constraints of the subsystems involved, while preparing at best the subsequent design problems. Most importantly, our approach allows to overcome several resisting flaws of the already existing algorithms.