Planning Method for Multi-Satellite Cooperating Search for a Moving Target on the Sea

As the increasing ocean shipping and other activities on the sea, the incidents of vessels in distress have become more frequent. It causes the traditional maritime search to get less efficient and costly. In order to supply this gap, based on the fast developed increasingly mature satellite technology and systems, multi-satellite cooperating search for a moving target on the sea is proposed. In this article, the task planning method for this application is discussed. Firstly, the target characteristics and the cooperating process are analyzed. Then, the model of multi-satellite cooperating search for a moving target on the sea is formed and the corresponding solving algorithm is given. Finally, the above method is validated by a testing case.