Scheduling Space-to-Ground Optical Communication Under Cloud Cover Uncertainty

Any reliable model for scheduling optical space-to-ground communication must factor in cloud cover conditions due to attenuation of the laser beam by water droplets clouds. In this article, we provide two alternative models uncertainty predictions: a robust optimization with polyhedral set and distributionally moment-based ambiguity set. We computationally analyze their performance over realistic system one satellite network ground stations located U.K. The are solved schedule operations six months utilizing predictions from official weather forecasts. found that presented formulations treatment outperform long-term models, which is ignored. Both treatments exhibit similar performance. Nonetheless, novel variant considerably faster solve.