OPIR Scheduling

Stottler Henke developed an automatic, intelligent application for scheduling Overhead Persistent Infrared (OPIR) sensors to achieve optimized utilization of existing sensors in the Joint OPIR Center (JOPC). Optimization for the JOPC Persistent GEOINT Mission Manager (PGMM) involves daily scheduling for many billions of dollars of OPIR assets. The JOPC receives OPIR collection requests from the defense and intelligence communities and manually attempts to optimize the utilization of the sensors, maximizing the quality and quantity of the most important collections. However, there are many issues to consider, and the thousands of requests exceed the capabilities of even the most expert schedulers to truly maximize the executed results—and more complex and more numerous requests are anticipated in the near future.

Building on the prior version of Stottler Henke’s Aurora-based JOPC Automatic OPIR Scheduler’s prototype, we developed a full-scale system, integrating it with the operational environment, and conducting tests and trials with JOPC schedulers and real data. Our system is capable of scheduling more numerous and complex collection requests, achieving higher utilization of existing sensors, successfully scheduling a greater number of collections and collection-minutes, and achieving improved quantity and quality of collected intelligence over either the existing manual process or other automatic scheduling algorithms under development.

Our OPIR scheduler relates to a similar, secondary application – an automatic, intelligent space surveillance network (SSN) sensor scheduler for the National Space Defense Center, with which we will perform integration and testing. In both cases, the software will reduce manpower and response time by orders of magnitude, improve schedule quality, and allow more complex sensor requests or handle significantly more space objects.