Deployment optimization of near space airships based on MOEA/D with local search

The near space communication system is a burgeoning communication system. This system has many advantages over the satellite and terrestrial networks. Being built on the near space airships, the deployment of the airships has a significant impact on the performance of the system. Various factors should be taken into consideration to build such a system of which some objectives relate with each other and specific areas weight objectives differently. The evolutionary multiobjective optimization can fulfill the purpose to provide a series of choices of the deployment scheme. In this paper, a model of such a system is proposed and the deployment of airships is solved using the multiobjective evolutionary algorithm based on decomposition. Cases with different numbers of airships are tested and the Pareto fronts are obtained. In order to increase the density of the Pareto front, a local search method based on the positions of the airships is proposed. The experiment shows that the local search method can effectively increase the number of Pareto solutions obtained.