Preferred Solutions of the Ground Station Scheduling Problem using NSGA-III with Weighted Reference Points Selection

The Ground station Scheduling Problem refers to the allocation of the communication tasks, among the ground stations and satellites. In general, the problem is formulated as a many-objective problem. The NSGA-III is an algorithm developed to solve such problems. Due to its selection operator that uses a number of reference points, the NSGA-III gives users the option to specify their own reference points. In this paper, we use this opportunity by generating distributed reference points, shifted depending on weights. A specific weight is assigned to each objective that corresponds to reference points for preferred solutions. The generation of these reference points and their effect on the final objective function values of the Pareto front are first tested on the DTLZ2 test function with 4 objectives and for a different combination of weights. Finally, various weights are applied to an instance of the Ground station Scheduling Problem, leading to Pareto fronts that favor specific objectives and feasible schedules.