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Paper details
Number 2 - June 2025
Volume 35 - 2025
Exact algorithms for the satellite image selection problem
Sylwester Swat, Maciej Antczak, Tomasz Zok, Jacek Blazewicz, Jedrzej Musial
Abstract
Space development is more relevant than ever with the increasing number of satellite launches for various applications. The
amount of space data collected daily is growing exponentially and many customers are interested in continuously monitoring
different regions of the Earth. It often requires stitching together many images from other providers to cover an Area of
Interest (AOI), resulting in a mosaic. Each satellite image has various parameters, such as cost, download time, cloud
coverage, and resolution. The main question is how to optimally select the subset of available images to fully cover the AOI
while minimizing total cost and cloud coverage. The problem is known as satellite image mosaic selection (SIMS).Manual
selection of promising images is often impossible, especially when dealing with large AOIs or many photos. To solve the
problem, we propose several new exact algorithms using different techniques, such as branch-and-bound or mixed-integer
linear programming. These algorithms show quality and efficiency compared with existing approaches and are expected to
benefit various industrial applications.
Keywords
satellite image mosaic selection, set cover, hitting set, plane division