Increasing efficiency of ground stations scheduling for sustainable satellite based services

Satellite technologies are widely used in many areas of modern society in general and in smart cities in particular. Improved traffic management, air quality monitoring, emergency management, geospatial distribution, management of critical energy infrastructure are examples of the tasks where using satellite technologies can give significant contribution to sustainability and safety. Proper operation of satellite systems is needed to achieve that. This requires solving a number of tasks, one of which is scheduling tracking, telemetry and command (TT&C) ground stations to carry out communication sessions with satellites. Service actions and transmitting a plan for payload operation such as Earth observation or radio broadcasting are performed during that sessions. In this paper, the authors discuss mathematical formulation of TT&C ground stations scheduling problem in order to analyse possibilities to increase the quality of schedule and efficiency of its adaptations. Possible approaches to achieve the goal, and factors influenced on parrying emergency situations are demonstrated. Approaches for monitoring the current situation and preparing data about it are proposed. Possible ways of its improvement are discussed, basic idea of decision support system to determine state of ground stations is proposed. Evaluating the efficiency of changing schedule of TT&C ground stations using proposed approaches and tools is given. The proposed approaches can help to ensure performing both planned and emergency tasks of satellite systems in order to ensure normal work of many services in smart cities.