A Heuristic Genetic Algorithm for Regional Targets’ Small Satellite Image Downlink Scheduling Problem

Table 1

Variable description.

Variables	Description
	Satellite data downlink tasks
	Point target tasks
	Regional target tasks
	Groups of regional targets
	Start time of image acquisition
	End time of image acquisition
	Earliest data downlink start time
	Data downlink start time
	Duration of the data downlink
	Profit of task
	Deadline of data downlink
	Earliest data downlink start time of regional targets
	Latest data downlink end time of regional targets
	The set of ground station’s visibility mask
	Earliest visible time of a ground station
	Latest visible time of a ground station
	Earliest visible time of a ground station
	Latest visible time of a ground station
	Completion of data downlink tasks
	Data compression ratio
	Interval time between two data downlink tasks
	Time interval between the imaging end time and the data downlink start time