Efficient Radar-Target Assignment in Low Probability of Intercept Radar Networks: A Machine-Learning Approach

Abstract

To achieve low probability of intercept (LPI) in radar networks for multiple target detection, it is necessary to find the optimal assignment of distributed radars to targets. The multi-radar to multi-target assignment (MRMTA) problem aims to find the best radar combination, but its brute-force (BF)-based approach over all possible sensor combinations has exponential complexity, making it challenging to implement in networks with a large number of radars or targets. This limits the implementation of the BF approach in networks that prioritize low latency and complexity. To address this challenge, we propose a supervised machine-learning (ML)-based solution for the MRMTA problem. Our proposed implementation scheme performs the training procedure offline, leading to a significant reduction in assignment complexity and processing latency. We conducted extensive numerical simulations to design an ML structure with high accuracy, convergence speed, and scalability. Simulation results demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of our proposed ML-based MRMTA solution, which achieves near-optimal LPI performance with considerably lower computation time than benchmark schemes. Our proposed solution has the potential to optimize the assignment of distributed radars to targets in LPI radar networks and improve the performance of complex networks with low latency and complexity requirements.INDEX TERMS Multi-radar to multi-target assignment (MRMTA), supervised machine-learning (ML), low probability intercept radars, feed-forward neural network (FNN), radar network, information fusion.