A Multi-Objective Crossing Waypoints Location Optimization in Air Route Network

The optimization of national air route network (ARN) becomes imperative for the increase of air traffic. The Crossing Waypoints Location Problem (CWLP) is a crucial problem in the optimal design of ARN. Although CWLP is in fact a typical multi-objective problem, most state-of-art work solve it from a single objective way, which only considers the flight efficiency and other important properties of ARN are neglected, such as the airspace capacity. In this paper, we propose a multi-objective model for CWLP, in which the airspace capacity can be enhanced with minimizing the standard deviation of betweenness. Then we introduce a Multi-Objective Particle Swarm Optimization (MOPSO) to optimize the flight efficiency and the airspace capacity simultaneously. The application of redesigning the Chinese ARN shows our approach can alleviate the airspace congestion efficiently compared with the conventional methods.