Image-acquisition algorithms for agile satellites in snapshot mode

The new generation of agile satellites provides wider movement regarding its predecessors. However, this characteristic introduces difficulty in the scheduling of the image capture. The aim of this paper is to find optimal solutions of the image capture process maintaining an acceptable quality of the images. As obtaining the exact solution is a very expensive process speaking in computation time terms, it is necessary to develop different heuristic algorithms which will lead on to approximate solutions with lower computation cost. Once the algorithms are defined, Monte Carlo method is used to perform the simulations and to compute the results and the conclusions. Matlab software has been employed to perform this work.