BeiDou satellites cross-regional communication path assignment model and resource management

Time division inter-satellite communication and ranging link assignment of BeiDou satellites have made important progress; however, there is still the unsolved issue of integrated communication between ground gateway, aircraft, or even ship, and the BeiDou satellites. Therefore, in this study, we develop a path assignment model based on the idea of clustering and Markov chain. The optimal path is determined by the objective function based on the maximum transition probability. The transition probability takes into account the communication environment, congestion status, aircraft mobility, and reduces the complexity of path assignment by hiding the topology in the region. At the same time, due to the limited resources of onboard computing, storage and bandwidth, we also design a resource management strategy based on task urgency, aimed at minimizing the unreasonable allocation index, to enable the readjustment of link application resources. Finally, the performance of the model and the strategy in average link handover times, link reliability, resource allocation fairness, and network quality of service is determined by simulation.

Joint Scheduling of Vessel Traffic and Pilots in Seaport Waters

In the busiest seaports, vessel traffic and vessel pilotage management play a crucial role in congestion mitigation. The management of vessel traffic and pilotage involves scheduling the vessels for sailing into and out of a seaport and scheduling the pilots for navigating the vessels in the port waters. In this paper, we study the integrated vessel traffic and pilot scheduling problem of a seaport. We manage the vessel traffic by optimizing the utilization of the navigation channels and the utilization of the anchorage areas in the terminal basin and incorporate the decision of pilot scheduling into the decision of vessel traffic management for congestion mitigation and vessel service enhancement. We formulate the problem on a time–space network with vessel- and pilot-dependent arc costs and develop an integer programming model that minimizes the sum of the berthing and departure tardiness cost of vessels, the cost of unsatisfied vessel service requests, and the pilot dispatching cost. For solving the model, we enumerate feasible vessel paths a priori and develop a Lagrangian relaxation algorithm that decomposes the problem into a vessel and pilot path assignment subproblems. Computational performance of the Lagrangian relaxation algorithm is tested on problem instances generated based on the physical layout and operational data of the Waigaoqiao Port in Shanghai.

Bi-level Game Model for Interaction between Arctic and Traditional Routes

This paper proposes a bi-level model from the perspective of game theory to describe the effect of the rise of Arctic shipping routes on traditional routes and their response. The upper-level model demonstrates the competition between shipping companies that maximise their own profits via speed adjustment, which can be presented as a generalised Nash equilibrium problem and is solved by the generalised reduced-gradient method. The lower-level model illustrates the response of customers who reassign their demands with an elastic total demand, which is presented as a logit-type multi-path assignment problem and is solved by the iterative balancing method. A case study is used to examine the rationality of the proposed model and algorithm.