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Engineering Applications of Articial Intelligence 17 (2004) 111122

The design of the global navigation satellite system surveying networks using genetic algorithms
Hussain Aziz Saleha,*, Rachid Chelouahb
a

Institut de Recherches Interdisciplinaires et de Developpements en Intelligence Articielle, IRIDIA, CP 194/6, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Avenue Franklin Roosevelt 50, Bruxelles 1050, Belgium b !nieurs du canton de Vaud (E.I.V.D), Route de Cheseaux 1, Yverdon les Bains CH-1400, Switzerland Ecole dInge Received 9 September 2003; received in revised form 31 October 2003; accepted 5 November 2003

Abstract Genetic algorithms are mostly considered to represent the primary class of evolutionary methods that operate by combining solutions to produce better ones. In this paper, a very efcient method based on the concept of the genetic algorithms metaheuristic technique is developed for providing an efcient solution for observing a surveying network using space-based satellites systems. These systems are used to determine the geographical positions of unknown points on and above the earth and its oceans using suitable satellite receiving equipment. When related to satellite technology, a surveying network can be dened as a number of points which are co-ordinated by a series of observation sessions. These sessions are formed by placing receivers on the points of the network. An observation session can be dened as a period of time during which two or more receivers simultaneously record satellite signals. Thus, the schedule of receivers is a sequence of sessions to be observed consecutively. The goal is to select the best order in which these sessions can be organised to give the best possible solution at minimal cost. Several real space-based satellites surveying networks have been used to assess the performance of the proposed technique in terms of the solution quality and computational effort. r 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Combinatorial optimisation problems (COPs); Genetic algorithms (GAs); Global navigation satellite systems (GNSSs); Metaheuristics

1. Introduction Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSSs) provide 24-h coverage for the user with highly accurate threedimensional position and timing information in all weather at most locations worldwide (see Fig. 1). In addition, these systems play an important role in many real-life applications (e.g. in early warning and management of the effects of disasters, monitoring of the environment, agriculture, transport and timing, etc.). Surveying is another area where space technology is having a big impact in determining locations and changes in locations within short observational periods and over long distances (Leick, 1995). The purpose of
*Corresponding author. Tel.: +32-2-650-27-12; fax: +32-2-65027-15. E-mail addresses: hsaleh@ulb.ac.be (H. Saleh), rachid.chelouah@ eivd.ch (R. Chelouah). URLs: http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~hsaleh/, http://www.eivd.ch/ina/ chelouah. 0952-1976/$ - see front matter r 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.engappai.2003.11.001

surveying is to determine the locations of points on the ground. The physical position of a point is represented by its geographical co-ordinates (X ; Y ; Z ) with regards to a datum as shown in Fig. 2. For hundreds of years, surveyors have relied on optical instruments and physical measuring devices (e.g. tape measures or chains). Optical instruments require direct line of site from the instrument to a target. Measuring tapes or chains require that the survey crew physically pass through all the intervening terrain to measure the distance between two points. Surveying methods have undergone a revolutionary change over the last few years with the deployment of the satellite navigation systems. On the other hand, satellite systems equipment is very expensive compared with other methods, and this becomes crucial when the amount of work increases for large projects. The most widely known satellite navigation systems: are the American Global Positioning System (GPS), the Russian GLObal Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) (see Fig. 1), and the forthcoming

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X
Fig. 1. The GPS and GLONASS constellation of navigation satellite.

ab

Y Y

a
Z

db dc X

b c

eg
A

d X g
ZA XA Y

e
Fig. 3. Observation of sessions using GPS receivers.

YA X
Fig. 2. The position of the point A with respect to the co-ordinates system (XYZO).

European Satellite Navigation System (GALILEO). In this research, it is the use of GPS to establish surveying networks that is being investigated. A GPS network is distinctly different from a classical survey network in that no intervisibility between points (unknown stations on the earth) is required. The GPS surveying network is determined using 3D vector measurements called sessions as shown in Fig. 3. Previously it was terrestrial network (i.e. network not based on use of satellite techniques) that formed the basic framework for geomatics information in many countries. Its design was based on intuition and empirical formulae (Graferend, 1974). More recently, establishing control has become dominated by satellite techniques (Kleusberg et al., 1988). These techniques have the ability to perform precise positioning for geodetic and surveying purposes in a fraction of the time and cost than required by terrestrial methods. However, this achievable precision for large networks can be optimised if the GPS logistics of the eldwork can be investigated. GPS logistics have been explained in Dare (1995), but a brief summary of the logistics of the GPS eldwork is illustrated in Fig. 3 and Table 1. To take advantages of the whole benet of the GPS technique, rational organisation of the components of all the eldwork is important and necessary to a GPS surveying network. The GPS surveying eldwork consists of all the

controllable and uncontrollable variables such as time, cost, personnel, location of stations, receivers and satellites to be used, sessions to be observed, length of session observation, the receiver schedule (i.e. the order in which the sessions will be observed), etc. The aim of this paper is to create methods based on robustness and computer procedures to model the components of the eldwork in order to determine the best GPS network based on geometrical and cost restriction. To achieve the above objectives and maximise the benet of using the GPS system, metaheuristic techniques have been researched and implemented to determine an efcient solution to a GPS surveying network (Dare and Saleh, 2000). These techniques, which are based on ideas of Articial Intelligence (AI), allow the formulation of an efcient strategy for designing a GPS surveying network by reducing the total cost of carrying out the survey. In this paper, Genetic Algorithms (GAs), which are inspired from population genetics, have been proposed and developed for optimising the GPS surveying network problem. The paper is organised as follows. A general framework is described for the GPS surveying network design problem as a Combinatorial Optimisation Problem (COP). Then, the search strategy of the proposed GAs technique, its structural elements and genetic operators are explained and followed by a general procedure applied to the GPS surveying network problem. Subsequently, several real GPS surveying networks of different type and size have been used to assess the performance of the proposed technique in terms of solution quality and computational effort. The

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H. Saleh, R. Chelouah / Engineering Applications of Articial Intelligence 17 (2004) 111122 Table 1 The observation plan Session q Receiver X at Station q1 q2 q3 q4 ab db dc eg a d d e Move cost Cad 0 Cde Receiver Y at Station b b c g Move cost 0 Cbc Ceg w1 w2 w3 w4 P 0 Cad Cbc Cde Ceg
q1

113

Session cost

Total cost

wq

paper ends with conclusion and discussion of possible directions for future research.

2. Formulation a GPS surveying network as a combinatorial optimisation problem There are difculties in the design of GPS surveying networks that relate to the establishment of good observation. To explain the observation procedure of the GPS network as shown in Fig. 3, the observation plan of Table 1 is formed as follow. At the start of the survey when observing the initial session q1 between stations a and b there will be no movements for the receivers (i.e. the cost of observing session q1 is W1 0). A session can be dened as a period of time during which two or more receivers simultaneously record satellite signals for a xed duration. After a certain time of observation, the receivers are then moved to other stations for further measurements. This process of sessions observation continues till the whole network is completely observed according to an observation schedule as shown in Table 1. The value of this table (i.e. the total cost of observing the network) has to be minimised using the proposed GAs technique. To resume the survey and observe session q2 after completing session q1 ; receiver X is moved from station a to d ; while receiver Y remains located at station b (i.e. there is only one movement). Therefore, the cost of observing session q2 is obtained by Cad the cost associated with moving receiver X from station a to d (W2 Cad ). To observe session q3 after completing session q2 ; receiver Y is moved from station b to c; while receiver X remains located at station d (i.e. there is only one movement). Therefore, the cost of observing session q3 is obtained by Cbc the cost associated with moving receiver Y from station b to c (W3 Cbc ). To observe session q4 after completing session q3 ; receiver X is moved from station d to e and the receiver Y is moved from station c to g (i.e. there are two movements). Therefore, the total cost of observing session q4 is obtained by Cde the cost associated with moving receiver

X from station d to e and by Ccg the cost associated with moving receiver Y from station c to g (W4 Cde Ccg ). The aim of the research presented in this paper is to seek an optimal solution (or close to it) that can enable signicant reduction to the overall cost of the GPS surveying network to be made and to ease the task of carrying out the whole work in the shortest time possible. A method for the optimal design of GPS networks, within the Operational Research (OR) eld, was solved using Travelling Salesman Problem mathematical programming techniques (TSP) (Dare, 1995). The requirements for the optimal solution of the TSP is to nd the optimal route through points based upon the supplied cost matrix. This matrix represents the cost of moving a receiver from point to another. The TSP solution was developed upon an existing Branch-andBound (B&B) algorithm but modied to take into account the more complex problems such as using more than one receiver or allowing for multiple working periods (Multiple Travelling Salesman Problem MTSP). The B&B algorithm enables the optimal solution to be found without investigating every possible solution. However, this approach is limited to relatively small GPS surveying networks. To formulate the above survey as a logistic problem and optimised using the proposed GAs metaheuristic technique, a GPS surveying network can briey dened as follows. A number of receivers (X, Y, etc.) are placed at stations (a; b; c; d ; etc.) to be co-ordinated by determining sessions (ab; ac; dc; etc.) between these stations (i.e. unknown points on the earth). The problem is to search for the best order in which these sessions can be observed to give the best possible solution V at minimal cost, i.e. X Minimise C V Wq ; 1
p1

where C V is the cost of a feasible schedule V N ; R; S; S f1; y; sg is a set of stations; R f1; y; rgP is a set of receivers; U f1; y; ug is a set of sessions; Wq the total cost of carrying out the whole survey using all the GPS receivers. The GPS surveying network is practically considered as a complex COP because the number of possible

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sessions increases as a function of number of stations and number of receivers according to the following equation umin s!=s r! More information about using this equation can be seen in Unguendoli (1990). In practice, the actual number of sessions that is likely to be used to satisfy precision and reliability requirements would be uact 222:5umin : As can be seen, surveyors visit stations more than once (at least once) and observe more sessions than the minimum required. These additional observations, which are common throughout surveying, improve the precision and reliability of the resultant co-ordinates of the surveyed stations. With large number of receivers, the time spent observing the network can be signicantly reduced, because the minimum number of session falls as the number of receivers increases. For more details about the effect of the used number of receivers on required sessions to complete the network, the reader is highly recommended to consult Dare (1995). Exact methods can only solve relatively small networks and are not practical as the size of the network increases. To provide a suitable method to design large networks more efciently and effectively, the use of the concept of GAs has been researched and developed. GAs can produce better solutions by adopting the selective breeding and recombination strategies on a population of solutions.

Objective function Global maximum Local maximum

Local minimum

Global minimum Iterations

Fig. 4. Global and local optima.

3. The genetic algorithm strategy GAs are one of the adaptive metaheuristic optimisation techniques which include simulated annealing (SA), Tabu search (TS), ant colony optimisation (ACO), etc. These techniques are inspired, respectively, by the Darwinian evolutionary process, the physical annealing process, the proper use of memory structures and the observation of real ant colonies. Metaheuristic techniques combine different operational and organisational strategies based on robustness and computerised procedures in order to obtain high-quality solutions. These techniques have been developed dramatically in the early 1980s and have had widespread success in solving a variety of practical and difcult problems in engineering business, industry and many other areas (see e.g. Osman and Kelly, 1996). These techniques can be described as iterative generate-and-test procedures for obtaining an optimal solution (or close to it) to NP complex problems. More precisely, the aim of a metaheuristic technique is to search and determine the most suitable solution for optimising (minimising or maximising) an objective function (cost, accuracy, time, etc.) over a discrete set of feasible solutions to a real life problem as shown in Fig. 4. There are two main types of metaheuristic techniques: those that construct an initial solution from scratch and then optimise it (e.g. ACO and GAs, etc.), and those that improve on a previously

obtained initial solution (e.g. TS and SA, etc.). More details about the application of these metaheuristics for optimising the GPS surveying network problem can be found in (Saleh, 1999). In this paper, GAs metaheuristic is adopted to construct an initial solution for a GPS surveying network from scratch and then optimise it. GAs are iterative procedures that operate on a nite pool of solutions (called chromosomes). The fundamental idea behind GAs is to maintain this pool of selected solutions that evolves under selective pressure that favours better solutions. To facilitate producing these better solutions and to prevent the proposed technique from trapping in local optima, a set of genetic operators have to be used (Michalewicz, 1996). These operators include cross-over, mutation, and inversion. In cross-over operator, some cut-points (members of the population) are chosen randomly and the information between these chromosomes is exchanged. The mutation operator prevents the GAs from trapping in a local optimum by selecting a random position and changing its value. In inversion operator, two-cut points are chosen at random and the order of the bits is reversed. The features of GAs can be summarised as follows: maintaining a set of possible solutions, reproducing better solutions is based on tness, crossover parts these solutions and mutate them, and good at searching rough landscapes. To explain the importance of the proposed GAs metaheuristic in optimising the GPS surveying network problem, consider the network of Fig. 3 where surveyors with their receivers must visit each station of this network according to the initial plan of Table 1. The surveyor knows the travelling time between stations and his main task is to minimise the total time elapsed. In what order should the surveyor visit all the stations to

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co-ordinate them in a very efcient way? To try every possible route might be feasible on a small network, but some search spaces are very exhaustive for large networks as shown in Section 4. In this case, the GAs metaheuristic can be used to nd a better solution in much less time. Although it probably will not nd an optimal solution, but it can quickly nd a near optimal solution. To illustrate the above procedure of GAs, the plan of Table 1 using 8 sessions is used (V q1 ; q2 ; q3 ; q4 ; q5 ; q6 ; q7 ; q8 ). The goal is to nd the minimum paths (cheapest solution) for a number of nodes to be visited once (number of sessions to be observed). There are three basic steps for solving the GPS surveying network problem using the proposed GAs technique as follows. First, to create a group of many random solutions (plans) which is called a population. V0 q1 ; q2 ; q3 ; q4 ; q5 ; q6 ; q7 ; q8 ; V1 q1 ; q2 ; q5 ; q4 ; q3 ; q6 ; q7 ; q8 ; V2 q1 ; q6 ; q3 ; q4 ; q5 ; q2 ; q7 ; q8 ; V3 q4 ; q2 ; q3 ; q1 ; q5 ; q6 ; q7 ; q8 ; V4 q1 ; q8 ; q3 ; q4 ; q5 ; q6 ; q7 ; q2 ; VN : Second, to pick two solutions (parents) of better quality (cheapest plans) from the population. V1 q1 ; q2 ; q5 ; q4 ; q3 ; q6 ; q7 ; q8 ; V4 q1 ; q8 ; q3 ; q4 ; q5 ; q6 ; q7 ; q2 : Third, to create two new solutions (children) by combining the selected solutions in the hope that they will generate better ones. As shown in the last four sessions q3 ; q6 ; q7 ; q8 in V1 which were replaced by the rst four sessions q1 ; q8 ; q3 ; q4 in V4 : The two generated 0 0 solutions (children) V1 and V4 are as follows:
0 V1 q1 ; q2 ; q5 ; q4 ; q1 ; q8 ; q3 ; q4 ; 0 V4 q3 ; q6 ; q7 ; q8 ; q5 ; q6 ; q7 ; q2 :

POP, POP' : Table with size N generation := 0 POP := Initialize Population (fmin , xmin ):= Best individual in the parent population while not termination condition do generation = generation + 1 repeat Selection Crossover (pCross) Mutation (pMut) until POP' is full Evaluation of POP' POP := New population between (POP, POP' ) end while
Fig. 5. The pseudo-code of classical GA.

* *

POP0 is the population at time t+1 after one generation; N is the population size; fmin is the lowest cost of one individual throw the population POP; xmin is the individual that allows to obtain this lowest value of the objective function.

To carry out the above steps and create new solutions, two kinds of genetic operators are used. The rst operator is called crossover which is performed between two parents by picking a random break point in the parents sequences and exchange between parents subsequences after that break point. The second operator is called mutation in which the GAs technique randomly changes one of the solutions. Fig. 5 represents a pseudo code of classical GAs technique where the parameters pCross and pMut are the crossover and the mutation probability, respectively. In this gure, the following notation is used:
*

In this paper, the basic GAs technique was modied to satisfy the requirements of the search space of the GPS surveying network problem. This modied technique, which is called GPS-GA technique, adopts two distinct phases during the search process. The rst phase is used to diversify the search process, while the second phase is implemented to intensify this process around an individual by slightly changing the order of the sessions to be observed. This individual solution is likely to be a good plan for observing the GPS surveying network of Fig. 3. The intensication phase, which is very important in case of GPS surveying, has not been developed enough in other documentations on the genetic algorithms (Renders and Flasse, 1996). In this paper, the developed GPS-GA technique implements the above two phases using different strategy of research: the diversication phase uses the GA strategy while the intensication phase uses the 2-opt algorithm. For more details about this algorithm, the reader is referred to Lin (1965). The pseudo-code of the developed GPS-GA technique is represented in Fig. 6. More details about the components of the developed technique are presented in the following sections. 3.1. Diversication The diversication phase of the developed GPS-GA technique can be carried out using the following stages: 3.1.1. Initialisation of the population The main difference between the GAs and the other metaheuristic techniques is that they do not search from

POP is the population at time t;

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POP, POP' : Table with size N pCross := 0.9 pMut := 0.85 generation := 0 POP := Initialize Population (fmin , xmin ) := Best individual in the parent population while not termination condition do DIVERSIFICATION generation := generation + 1 repeat Selection Crossover(pCross) Mutation(pMut) until POP' is full Evaluation of POP' POP := The new population between (POP, POP' ) if (detection of promising individual or schedule) then INTENSIFICATION "2-opt" Algorithm end while
Fig. 6. The pseudo-code of the developed GPS-GA technique.

POP : Empty table of individual with size N : Individual with size M at position k in POP Vk repeat k in 1..N do // initialize the individual Vj in order repeat i in 1..M Vk [i] = i; end repeat // we mix by randomly exchanging elements repeat i in 1..M j = Random(M-i); where j is different of i Exchange(Vk[i], Vk[j]); end repeat POP[k] := Vk ; end repeat
Fig. 7. The pseudo-code to determine the initial population.

one single solution (individual), but from a population of solutions. Therefore, the procedure of choosing an appropriate population size is a difcult task. In the beginning, we generate an individual in an order (i.e. an observation plan or schedule within the context of GPS), and then by using M permutations (i.e. number of sessions in a plan) we exchange randomly the elements of the individual. An example for a population of M individuals of size 8 (8 different schedules) is given below:
* *

2. Calling M times the exchange procedure to produce others plans from the rst one. After M exchanges, the obtained observation plan is considered as a randomly generated plan. 3. To generate the whole population, the procedure which is described in step 2 will be repeated N times. The pseudo-code for the above step can be written as shown in Fig. 7. 3.1.2. Selection The selection method adopted in this paper is based on the concept of the roulette-wheel selection. More details can be seen in Chelouah and Siarry (2000). After calculating the objective function (cost value) for each individual and detected the best value, the difference in value is calculated between the value of the objective function for each individual and the best-found value. This difference in value is called tness value within the concept of developed GPS-GA technique. Then, the tness value for each individual is replaced by the cumulated tness which is obtained by adding its tness to the previous values. The individuals are mapped to contiguous segments of a line in which each individual segment is equal in size to the associated cumulated tness. A random number is generated and the individual whose segment spans the random number is selected. This process will be repeated until the predened number of individuals is obtained. To demonstrate the above procedure, the selection steps are explained using the GPS surveying network of Fig. 3 as follows: Step 1: Calculating the cost for each individual f V1 2 i:e:; the cost for observation plan 1; f V2 5; f V3 4; f V4 3:

Generating the simplest individual V0 ; using M permutations to randomly generate an individual; repeating the previous process N times to complete the population.

To demonstrate the above steps, the following two solutions are used. 1. V0 : q1 ; q2 ; q3 ; q4 ; q5 ; q6 ; q7 ; q8 ; 2. V2 p1:p2:p3:p4:p5:p6:p7:p8; where N is the number of observation plans (population size within the concept of the developed GPS-GA technique); M is the individual length (number of sessions in each observation plan); p1 is the exchange (or permutation) between session 1 with another session drawn randomly. To generate a population with size N (N 6 individuals) where each individual contains M 8 sessions, the following step are carried out: 1. Generating the rst arranged individual (e.g. the simplest plan) V0 : q1 ; q2 ; q3 ; q4 ; q5 ; q6 ; q7 ; q8 :

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In this method the value of the function tness Fit of an individual i depends only on the value of its objective function f and on the maximum value of the objective function in the population Max(f). FitVi Maxf f Vi : Step 2: Finding the difference between the best value (which is Maxf 5) and the other values. FitV1 Maxf f V1 5 2 3 now the new fitness value is 3 for the V1 ; FitV2 Maxf f V2 5 5 0; FitV3 Maxf f V3 5 4 1; FitV4 Maxf f V4 5 3 2: Step 3: Finding the selection probability. Assuming that the used population is composed of N individuals, whose functions of Fitj adaptation are calculated. The probability of selection Pi (in percent) of an individual i is given by Eq. (1) as follows: FitVi ; 2 pi Pn j 1 FitVj p1 3=6; p2 0=6; p3 1=6; p4 2=6; where value 6 is the sum of FitVj 3 0 1 2: Table 2 gives the probabilities required for selection of each individual i for a population of 4 individuals. It is noticeable that the individual 2, who has the strongest value of the objective function (which results in a null value of tness), does not have any chance to be retained for the phase of reproduction. Each individual of the present population occupies a sector of the roulette-wheel with surface proportional to his adaptation. The corresponding biased roulette is represented in Fig. 8. The Roulette Wheel Selection method (RWS) (also called stochastic sampling with replacement) is directly derived from the proportional selection. The individuals are represented by segments of which are equal to the
3 0.0 0.17 draw 2

0.17 0.33 0.50

Fig. 8. Sectors of the roulette are proportional to the adaptation of the individuals.

draw 4 4 0.50

draw 1 1

draw 3

1.0

Fig. 9. Representation of the selected segments of the roulette using the straight line.

POP and POP' : table with size N POP := parent population (fopt , xopt ):= (fmin , xmin ):= the best individual in parent population REPRODUCTION (POP' := offspring population) (f'min , x'min ):= best individual in the offspring population if fmin < f'min localise (f'max , x'max ) the worst individual in POP' (f'max , x'max ) := (fmin , xmin ) else (fopt , xopt ):= (f'min , x'min ) end if POP := POP'
Fig. 10. The pseudo-code for determining new individuals using the developed GPS-GA technique.

Table 2 The selection probabilities of the populations individuals Individual 1 2 3 4 Total Fitness function 3 0 1 2 6 pi 3/6=0.5 0/6=0 1/6=0.17 2/6=0.33 1.00

value of their tness (portion of circle) as shown in Fig. 9. To select an individual which is likely to be reproduced, we randomly draw a number ranging between 0 and 1 and then we locate this value. To generate a population of 4 individuals, four draws will be carried out. The individual 1 (which is the best adapted one) was drawn 3 times, whereas the individual 3 was not retained for the phase of reproduction as illustrated in Figs. 9 and 10. 3.1.3. Crossover Crossover is a genetic operator that combines (mates) two chromosomes (parents) to produce new chromosomes (offsprings). The main idea behind crossover is that the new chromosome may be better than both of the parents if it takes the best characteristics from each

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118 H. Saleh, R. Chelouah / Engineering Applications of Articial Intelligence 17 (2004) 111122 Table 3 Result of the random crossover Parent 1 Parent 2 Child 1 Child 2 q1 q2 q3 q4 q5 q6 q7 q8 q3 q5 q2 q1 q4 q6 q7 q8 q1 q2 q3 q4 q4 q6 q7 q8 q3 q5 q2 q1 q5 q6 q7 q8

optimum by selecting a random position and changing its value (as in the simulated annealing technique). Examples of the mutation operators which were adopted in optimising the GPS surveying network problem are as follows: (1) Exchange between two sessions chosen randomly. For example the rst and the third sessions in this plan V0 q1 ; q2 ; q3 ; q4 :

Table 4 Correction of the crossover operation Parent 1 Parent 2 Child 1 Child 2 q1 q2 q3 q4 q5 q6 q7 q8 q3 q5 q2 q1 q4 q6 q7 q8 q1 q2 q3 q4 q6 q7 q8 q5 q3 q5 q2 q1 q6 q7 q8 q4

 Before exchange V0 q1 ; q2 ; q3 ; q4 : 0  After exchange V0 q3 ; q2 ; q1 ; q4 : (2) Replacement of a connection between two sessions. For example, the connection between the rst session and the nearest session as shown in the network of Fig. 3. The session q1 is close to the session q2 and this can be illustrated as follows:  Before exchange V0 q1 ; q2 ; q3 ; q4 : 0  After exchange V0 q2 ; q1 ; q3 ; q4 : (3) Double bridge or 4-exchanges non-sequential of two paths portions in a plan with a length of M : For example, we divide the plan to a given paths portions: (0yi) (i 1:::j ) (j 1:::k) (k 1yn) (n 1ym). The plan is modied by exchanging two sub paths portions non-sequential (0:::i) (k 1yn) (j 1:::k) (i 1yj ) (n 1ym). For more effective way, indexes i and k as well as j and n must be close to each other (i.e. paths portions in a plan must be short). 3.2. Intensication The developed GPS-GA technique adopts the intensication phase using simple and relatively effective 2opt algorithm as follows: (1) A promising plan is generated by the developed technique (diversication phase); (2) a simple transformation is applied to this plan (simplest possible); (3) if the transformation improves the plan, then this transformation is kept, else have to be changed; (4) the above operation will be repeated until no further improvement can be obtained to the plan. It is preferable in genetic algorithms to carry out a systematic search (e.g. to test all the possible permutations in a plan and this depending on the size of the problem). The following experiment shows that the simplest transformations are most effective in this plan with 8 sessions: q4 q5 q3 q6 q7 q8 q2 q1 : The rst transformation is to exchange two sessions in the plan (e.g. sessions 2 and 5) and the generated plan is q4 q2 q3 q6 q7 q8 q5 q1 : This transformation represents a plan with 2 exchanged sessions. In this

of the parents. Crossover occurs during evolution process according to a user-denable crossover probability. One of the challenges in applying the GA strategy to the GPS surveying network problem is how to encode the sessions of the observation plans. The encoding procedure cannot simply be the list of sessions in the order that they have to be observed. Therefore, the crossover operator will not successfully work as shown in the example of Table 3. Assuming the fourth session in observation plan 1 is the crossover point. Every session in parent 1 (the rst old plan) which is located before the crossover point has to be copied into the same position in child 1 (the rst new generated plan). Then, every session which is located after the crossover point (session number 4) in the parent 2 (the second old plan) has to be put into child 1. The opposite procedure has to be done for child 2 (the second new generated plan). As can be seen in Table 3, session 4 is used twice and session 5 is missing in child 1. Therefore, A more complicated form of encoding (i.e. a more complicated crossover) must be used for effectively optimising GPS surveying network problem. This form of encoding should ensure that the selected sessions to be observed are strictly preserved from the parents (old plans) to the children (the new generated plans). After the crossing point which is located before the last 4 elements of child 1 (i.e. the last 4 sessions in the new generated schedule), we re-copy each element (each session) of the second parent in this new generated child 1, except if it is already existed. In this case we pass to the next following element (the case of session 4 in child 1). The consequence is that we complete child 1 without missing any session or without repeating the same session as shown in Table 4 (i.e. an observation plan which contains all the selected sessions to be observed, but in different order). In this table, the same process is performed to generate child 2. 3.1.4. Mutation The rule of the mutation operator is to prevent the developed GPS-GA technique from trapping in a local

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case, the modication is important because the plan is divided break into in four bonds (or edges) between the sessions of the plan. A simpler transformation is the inversion of the way between two sessions, which will create only two bonds as shown in the resulting plan: q4 x q2 q8 q7 q6 q3 q5 q1 (one way with reversed course). 3.3. Tuning of the control parameters The procedure of tuning parameters governs the working of the developed GPS-GA technique itself and are mainly dependent on the size and type of the network. Within the framework of GPS network design, there are two main types of GPS network; the linear-type network and the triangular-type network. In the lineartype network session-swaps go in just two directions, while in the triangular-type network the process of the session-swaps goes in all directions as shown graphically in Figs. 11 and 12, respectively. In this paper as explained in Section 3.4, various procedures that satisfy the requirements of the above types of GPS networks have been developed and implemented. Therefore, when implementing the developed GPS-GA technique, several considerations will be taken in account with regards to the control parameters setting as follows:
*

In the case of crossover, is it necessary to prefer the speed (in order to make more iterations) or longer operators but more sophisticated?

The tuning of control parameters is an important issue concerning the implementation of metaheuristics. The main parameters characterising the developed GPSGA technique are:
* * * *

the the the the

initial population with size N ; crossover pCross; initial mutation pMut; decreasing law of the mutation probability.

What is the best size of a population? (i.e. number of individuals or number of plan). Is it necessary to use metaheuristics to initialise the population? (e.g. better neighbours+2-opt). Is it important that the parameters setting changes according to the phase of calculation? (e.g. more mutations are required at the end).

To cover the whole space solution, it is preferable to start with a large population and large variation in cost function for each individual. When the algorithm nds a promising solution (signicant reduction of the objective function), it performs the intensication phase by using 2-opt algorithm. Too fast exchange leads to risks of premature convergence of the algorithm but too low reduction penalises the computing time. The probability of mutation is usually in inverse ratio to the number of problem variables. Different papers (e.g. Chippereld et al., 1994; Michalewicz, 1996) reported some computational results for the optimal value of the mutation probability. The mutation probability depends on the size of the population and may vary during the optimisation process. To simulate this process, an exponential reduction of the mutation probability is introduced in this developed program. In some GPS real time applications (dynamic case), it is necessary to quickly obtain an acceptable solution even if it is not the best one (e.g. optimising GPS wide area augmentation system as explained in Section 5). On the other hand, some static GPS applications (as in the GPS surveying network problem), it is preferable to use more sophisticated operators to nd the best possible solution. The obtained values for the control parameters are:
* * *

Fig. 11. Linear-type GPS network.

the initial population size (N 30). the crossover probability (pCross=0.9). the mutation probability (pMut=0.85).

3.4. Stopping criteria Several stopping criteria are implemented for the developed GPS-GA technique as follows: (a) Stagnation of the adaptation value of the best individual (i.e. the value of tness function). If this value of the best individual stagnates during a signicant number of generations (i.e. no further improvement can be obtained). Then, the stopping criterion in this case is the pre-dened number of generations after the stagnation of the best value of adaptation. In other words, the stopping criterion is satised when the adaptation value has not changed

Fig. 12. Triangular-type GPS network.

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for the last consecutive identical schedules (say 10 iterations). (b) Maximum number of generations chosen by the user. The process of the developed GPS-GA technique is terminated when the stopping criterion is met after a dened number of generations. This case is preferable when there is a limited time to nd a solution. Thus, the user can limit the execution time of the algorithm to a maximum number of generations after which the algorithm stops its process.

4. Computational results It is preferable in metaheuristics to evaluate the performance of the developed techniques by comparison with an existing optimal solution. Some optimal known solutions were obtained for relatively small GPS surveying networks (Dare, 1995). The metaheuristic solution obtained using the developed GPS-GA technique had the same cost as the known optimal solution (Chelouah and Saleh, 2003). To generalise the developed GPS-GA technique and work with larger networks, two different types and sizes of the GPS surveying networks were used. The rst network was a triangulation-type of Malta with 38 sessions and 25 stations as shown in Fig. 13. The second network was a linear-type of the Seychelles with 71 sessions and 57 stations as shown in Fig. 14. Several benchmarks (i.e. well-known optimal solutions) were available for these networks which allowed actual comparisons to be made with respect to the performance of the developed technique. The rst benchmark represented the actual operating solution which was manually generated using the intuition and experience of the surveyors. The other two benchmarks were the metaheuristic solutions obtained by simulated annealing (SA) and Tabu search techniques. The SA technique is a stochastic search procedure inspired by the annealing of metals (Aarts and Van Laarhoven, 1985). This technique always accepts good changes but bad changes are treated with non-zero probability. Specically, in each iteration, this technique generates a set of neighbours of the current schedule; if a neighbour has lower cost, then the technique moves to it, otherwise it moves to another neighbour with a probability P (D; T ). This probability depends on the cost differential D and on an adjustable temperature T : During the course of the cooling process, the temperature is adjusted starting from a high value (which yields a higher probability P of an uphill move) but tends towards zero as the number of iterations increases. At high temperature, the search is almost random, while at low temperature the search becomes almost greedy,

Fig. 13. The Malta GPS network.

Fig. 14. The Seychelles GPS network.

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H. Saleh, R. Chelouah / Engineering Applications of Articial Intelligence 17 (2004) 111122 121 Table 5 Comparison of the GPS-metaheuristic techniques applied to different sizes and types of GPS networks observed in the Malta and the Seychelles Network information Network N COS Metaheuristic techniques GPS-SA CSA Malta Seychelles 38 71 1405 994 1355 976 ET 425 1700 RRC% 3.56 1.81 GPS-TS CTS 1075 933 ET 6 40 RRC% 23.49 6.14 GPS-GA CGA 940 857 ET 10 80 RRC% 33.10 13.78

i.e. only a good solution is accepted. The TS technique is an aggressive search technique based on the systematic exploration of memory structures (Glover and Laguna, 1997). This technique generates several neighbouring solutions and selects the best solution among all current candidate solutions. In order to avoid cycling, the move that reverts to the more expensive schedule just visited is prohibited. This forbidden task is accomplished by keeping the prohibited move Tabu in a matrix structure called the Tabu list. Using this list, TS can offer better ways to save computational effort without affecting schedule quality. The length of this list is a trade-off between quality and computation effort. Both SA and TS techniques were modied to the GPS network problem and produced good results. These modied techniques were applied to the Malta and the Seychelles GPS networks and called GPS-SA and GPSTS techniques. For the Malta network, the cost of the actual operating schedule had the cost of 1405 min. This cost was reduced to 1355 min by GPS-SA technique and 1075 min by GPS-TS technique (Saleh and Dare, 2001). By implementing the GPS-GA technique using the same data set of 38 sessions, the overall cost to observe the Malta GPS network was reduced to 940 min after 20 s. For the Seychelles GPS network, the actual operating solution had the cost of 994 min. This cost was reduced to 976 min by GPS-SA technique and 933 min by GPSTS technique (Saleh and Dare, 2002). By implementing the GPS-GA technique using the same data set of 71 sessions, the overall cost to observe the Seychelles GPS network was reduced to 857 min after 80 s. The main goal of the developed GPS-GA technique is to minimise the overall observation times of the GPS networks. The most useful measure for the evaluation the performance of this technique is the relative reduction of the cost (RRC) provided by these techniques with respect to the actual operational schedule, i.e. RRC COS CGA =COS 100: The results of Table 5 indicates that the developed GPSGA technique has consistently produced better solutions than the GPS-SA and GPS-TS techniques. For the Malta network, the GPS-GA technique nds better results and increases the RRC from (3.56% in GPS-SA)

GPS-GA

40

Relative Reduction of the Cost RRC%

GPS-TS

30 20 10 0 1 2
Best found schedule

GPS-SA

Fig. 15. The RRC versus the best schedule for observing the Malta GPS network obtained by the GPS-metaheuristic techniques.

GPS-GA

15

Relative Reduction of the Cost RRC%

10 5 0 1
GPS-SA

GPS-TS

2
Best found schedule

Fig. 16. The RRC versus the best schedule for observing the Seychelles GPS network obtained by the GPS-metaheuristic techniques.

and (23.49% in GPS-TS) to 33.10% as illustrated in Fig. 15. For the Seychelles GPS network, the GPS-GA technique nds better results and increases the RRC from (1.81% in GPS-SA) and (6.14% in GPS-TS) to 13.78% as illustrated in Fig. 16. In this research, all the developed metaheuristic algorithms have been coded in Visual C++. In Table 5 N is the number of sessions; COS the cost of the operational schedule (min) created by an experienced surveyor; CSA the cost of the metaheuristic schedule (min) obtained by GPS-SA technique; CTS the cost of the metaheuristic schedule (min) obtained by GPS-TS technique; CGA the cost of the metaheuristic schedule obtained by GPS-GA technique and ET the execution time in seconds.

5. Conclusion and future work The GAs optimisation is a promising metaheuristic approach for solving other complex combinatorial

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optimisation problems in the geomatic engineering. In this paper, the GPS-GA metaheuristic technique has been developed and achieved good results for the GPS surveying network problem. Directions for further is to add different evolutionary strategies and other GPS constraints to the main program to explore the solution space more effectively. For future work, the rst application to be considered is optimising of the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) which is a system of satellites and ground stations that provide the GPS with signal corrections to improve position accuracy. Currently, GPS alone does not meet the high standard navigation requirements for accuracy, integrity, and availability. WAAS corrects for GPS signal errors caused by ionospheric disturbances, timing, and satellite orbit errors, and it provides vital integrity information regarding the health of each GPS satellite (i.e. augmentation systems pick-up where global navigation systems leave off). The advantages of WAAS can be seen in many important real-life applications: aviation, maritime, railroad and highway, agriculture, emergency, disaster response, weather and geomatic science, etc. For example, WAAS can improve the performance in aviation by providing the following: reliable and accurate positioning worldwide, reduced delays, more fuel-efcient routes, increased system capacity, better tracking of aircraft, and rapid emergency response, etc. The prediction of augmented GPS performance for spread-out user locations requires analyses of both accuracy under normal conditions and integrity in the case of system failures. The proposed framework that combines covariance propagation and genetic algorithms for the WAAS network will allow system designers to study performance, risk, and cost tradeoffs in two stages. The rst stage is presented by a toplevel user value model which expresses the relative quality of the combined accuracy and integrity evaluations for a given network. The second stage is to carry out the global optimisation using the proposed GPS-GA technique which maintain a set of feasible network designs and continue to explore the search space for a further optimal network by incorporating processes which are observed at work in real life. The optimisation process of WAAS is a computer-intensive model but this will provide the potential to converge to the best possible network design.

Also, this research is supported by the Metaheuristics Network, a Research Training Network funded by the Improving Human Potential programme of the CEC. The information provided in this paper is the sole responsibility of the authors and does not reect the European Commissions opinion. The Commission is not responsible for any use that might be made of data appearing in this publication.

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Acknowledgements This research was supported by the lEIVD, Switzerland, the Syrian Ministry of Higher Education and by Marie Curie Fellowship awarded to Hussain Saleh.