Mission planning for regional surveillance

The regional surveillance problem discussed here involves formulating a flight route for an aircraft to scan a given geographical region. Aerial surveillance is conducted using a synthetic aperture radar device mounted on the aircraft to compose a complete, high-resolution image of the region. Two models for determining an optimised flight route will be described, the first employing integer programming and the second, genetic algorithms. A comparison of the solution optimality in terms of the total distance travelled, and model efficiency of the two techniques in terms of their required CPU times, will be made in order to identify the conditions under which it is appropriate to apply each model.