Efficiency-fairness tradeoff in distributed satellite scheduling

The growing demand for Earth observation satellite services requires the development of efficient and fair planning solutions. As users seek to fulfill their observation requirements, the scheduling solution must balance efficiency and fairness across stakeholders. However, concerns over privacy or proprietary interests might discourage stakeholders from sharing their requests with a centralized system, highlighting the need for a distributed approach. This paper addresses the multi-objective optimization problem of distributed scheduling for Earth observation satellites. We propose two novel algorithms designed to achieve a balanced trade-off between the competing objectives of efficiency and fairness. Experimental evaluation reveals that each algorithm presents a unique trade-off between efficiency and fairness based on problem parameters.