  A novel problem called satellite downlink scheduling problem (SDSP) under
breakpoint resume mode (SDSP-BRM) is studied in our paper. Compared to the
traditional SDSP where an imaging data has to be completely downloaded at one
time, SDSP-BRM allows the data of an imaging data be broken into a number of
pieces which can be downloaded in different playback windows. By analyzing the
characteristics of SDSP-BRM, we first propose a mixed integer programming model
for its formulation and then prove the NP-hardness of SDSP-BRM. To solve the
problem, we design a simple and effective heuristic algorithm (SEHA) where a
number of problem-tailored move operators are proposed for local searching.
Numerical results on a set of well-designed scenarios demonstrate the
efficiency of the proposed algorithm in comparison to the general purpose CPLEX
solver. We conduct additional experiments to shed light on the impact of the
segmental strategy on the overall performance of the proposed SEHA.
