Intelligent, Distributed, Cooperative AFSCN Mission Planning and Scheduling

ABSTRACT: The ultimate goal of this proposed effort is to develop a distributed, intelligent, cooperative AFSCN mission planning and scheduling system (DICAMPSS) to implement an improved scheduling process and provide greater sharing and availability of information and knowledge. To realize this goal will require development of SOC-based intelligent software that allows graphical editing and management of decision processes associated with their constellations and individual satellites. This software must be able to negotiate resolution of conflicts with the DICAMPSS community in an automated or semi-automated manner. Such a distributed intelligent communications resource scheduling capability will provide better quality schedules; faster scheduling; handling larger, more complex sets of requests; and handling additional communication system capabilities. The goals of the Phase I research are to understand the current and future satellite communications resource scheduling domain including SOC, 22 SOPS, and JSpOC user requirements, investigate integration requirements, elaborate the heuristics, algorithms and techniques for distributed scheduling, analyze them as to their feasibility in several dimensions, further prove the feasibility of the techniques through prototype development, and develop the Phase II system design. TRACLabs will provide their DCI agent architecture. ISS will provide JSpOC, JMS, and ALPS expertise. DF & NN will provide E-SAS and EMI detection experience. BENEFIT: The most direct target for the results of this effort is the Air Force Satellite Control Network (AFSCN). By both demonstrating significantly improved performance during Phase II and ensuring that the ultimate results can be integrated into Air Force operations, the Air Force will have a strong incentive to operationalize the Phase II development of the proposed DICAMPSS. We are already marketing Aurora, our general intelligent planning and scheduling framework, and customizing it for a variety of domains. The additional capabilities developed for distributed, cooperative communication scheduling can be synergistically marketed to the same clients. We anticipate that this effort will result in additional scheduling algorithms that we will be able to incorporate into our existing scheduling products, thus increasing the benefits they provide and their value.