Design of Satellite Constellations for Maximizing Regional Coverage Time Using Genetic Algorithms

The satellite's payload collects and transmits information only within its field of view. To accomplish the detection mission, a satellite constellation of a certain scale needs to be designed. In this paper, a genetic algorithm is used to optimize the satellite combination on a fixed orbit to maximize the coverage time of the target area. The interconnection between MATLAB and STK is implemented through the COM interface, and a hash table is introduced to eliminate duplicate calculations, significantly improving the algorithm's performance. Simulation results show that this method has potential for application in large-scale satellite network coverage optimization.