Multiple objective optimization for active sensor management

Abstract

The performance of a multi-sensor data fusion system is inherently constrained by the configuration of the given sensor suite. Intelligent or adaptive control of sensor resources has been shown to offer improved fusion performance in many applications. Common approaches to sensor management select sensor observation tasks that are optimal in terms of a measure of information. However, optimising for information alone is inherently sub-optimal as it does not take account of any other system requirements such as stealth or sensor power conservation. We discuss the issues relating to developing a suite of performance metrics for optimising multisensor systems and propose some candidate metrics. In addition it may not always be necessary to maximize information gain, in some cases small increases in information gain may take place at the cost of large sensor resource requirements. Additionally, the problems of sensor tasking and placement are usually treated separately, leading to a lack of coherency between sensor management frameworks. We propose a novel approach based on a high level decentralized information-theoretic sensor management architecture that unifies the processes of sensor tasking and sensor placement into a single framework. Sensors are controlled using a minimax multiple objective optimisation approach in order to address probability of target detection, sensor power consumption, and sensor survivability whilst maintaining a target estimation covariance threshold. We demonstrate the potential of the approach through simulation of a multi-sensor, target tracking scenario and compare the results with a single objective information based approach.