Multi‐period traffic routing in satellite networks

We introduce a traffic routing problem over an extended planning horizon that appears in geosynchronous satellite networks. Unlike terrestrial (e.g., fiber optic) networks, routing on a satellite network is not transparent to the customers. As a result, a route change is associated with significant monetary penalties that are usually in the form of discounts (up to 40%) offered by the satellite provider to the customer that is affected. The notion of these rerouting penalties requires the network planners to explicitly consider these penalties in their routing decisions over multiple time periods and introduces novel challenges that have not been considered previously in the literature. We develop a branch‐and‐price‐and‐cut procedure to solve this problem and describe an algorithm for the associated pricing problem. Our computational work demonstrates that the use of a multi‐period optimization procedure as opposed to a myopic period‐by‐period approach can result in cost reductions up to 13% depending on problem characteristics and network size considered. These cost reductions correspond to potential savings of several hundred million dollars for large satellite providers.