Satellite Lifetime Optimization Based on Discrete Cross Entropy Method

To properly define satellite lifetime so as to maximize economic net benefit, the lifetime optimization method is studied in this paper based on discrete cross entropy (CE) method. Firstly, the influences of lifetime on satellite system design, cost and revenue are studied and the disciplinary models are developed. Then the lifetime optimization problem is formulated, which is a typical discrete optimization problem with the discrete lifetime measured in years and the combination of the subsystem components as design variables. To efficiently solve this problem, the CE method is used as the optimization solver, and a convolution based smoothing strategy is proposed to enhance the space exploration capability and algorithm robustness. The efficacy of the proposed method is demonstrated in a 19 dimensional satellite lifetime design problem, which also verifies the importance of lifetime optimization in enhancing the satellite economic benefit.