The size and complexity of communication satellite payloads have been increasing very quickly over the last years and their configuration / reconfiguration have become very difficult problems. In this work, we propose to compare the efficiency of three well-known metaheuristic methods to solve an initial configuration problem, which objective is to minimise the length of the longest channel path. Experiments are conducted on real-world problem instances with realistic operational constraints (e.g., a maximum computation time of 10 minutes) and Wilcoxon test is used to determine with statistical confidence what technique is more suitable and what are its limitations. The results of this work will serve as an initial step in our research to design hybrid approaches to push even further the solving capabilities, i.e., tackling bigger payloads and more channels to activate.
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