Memetic Simulated Annealing for the GPS Surveying Problem

In designing Global Positioning System (GPS) surveying network, a given set of earth points must be observed consecutively (schedule). The cost of the schedule is the sum of the time needed to go from one point to another. The problem is to search for the best order in which this observation is executed. Minimizing the cost of this schedule is the goal of this work. Solving the problem for large networks to optimality requires impractical computational times. In this paper, several Simulated Annealing (SA) algorithms are developed to provide near-optimal solutions for large networks with bounded computational effort.