Sensor Scheduling

Bill Moran, University of Melbourne, Australia
Barbara La Scala, CENDS, University of Melbourne, Australia
Sofia Suvorova, Univeristy of Melbourne, Australia
Stephen Howard, DSTO, Australia

Abstract:

The aim of this tutorial is to provide an introduction to the methods of sensor management. While the ideas are formulated in terms of radar, they have wider application to any system for active sensing. Modern phased array radars are capable of changing their modes of operation -- their transmit waveform, beam shape, pulse repetition interval, beam direction, polarization, etc, on a pulse to pulse basis. Full utilization of this flexibility requires the introduction of ideas from stochastic control in addition to the usual signal
processing. Here we present several of the key ideas in the subject.

Specifically we shall cover the following topics:

1. An overview of the key features of a sensor management system.

2. Information theory based measures of effectiveness for sensor management.

3. Partially Observed Markov Decision Processes and Multi-Armed Bandits.

4. Practical algorithms for sensor management for tracking radars.

Prof Moran has been involved in many projects in and around signal processing over the last 13 years. In addition to his position at the University of Melbourne, he serves as a consulting mathematician to the Australian Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) and was also the Head of the Analytical Techniques and Medical Signal Processing Groups in the Cooperative Research Centre for Sensor Signal and Information Processing (CSSIP). Prof Moran has participated in numerous signal processing research projects for U.S. and Australian government agencies and industrial sponsors. He has published extensively in both pure and applied mathematics and is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. He has authored or co-authored well over 100 published mathematical research articles. Among his current research projects are: 1) an Air Force Phase II project in waveform design and adaptive radar for detection; 2) a DARPA funded ONR project on scheduling of adaptive radar systems; 3) an Australian Defence Department project on waveform design and clutter mitigation techniques; 4) an industry/government funded project on the use of advanced signal processing algorithms for gamma ray spectroscopy of on-belt ore samples.

Dr Barbara La Scala is a member of the Centre for Networked Decision Sensor Systems (CENDS) at the University of Melbourne. She has been involved in research into radars, target tracking and data fusion for 10 years and has published many papers on these topics. She has worked on a number of DSTO and DARPA funded projects in these areas. Dr La Scala is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems for papers on target tracking and multi-sensor systems. Dr La Scala also has several years of industry experience. She has worked on designing target tracking and sensor registration algorithms for Australia's Jindalee Over-the-horizon Radar Network (JORN). She also has extensive professional experience in the field of software development.

Dr Sofia Suvorova holds a Research Fellowship at the University of Melbourne. Prior to that she was a Research Scientist at DSTO, Edinburgh. She earned her undergraduate degree from Moscow State University and her PhD from Flinders University of South Australia. She has worked on and continues to work on problems in sensor signal processing with a special emphasis on issues associated with sensor scheduling. She has undertaken projects in tracking, cloud and foliage obscuration, waveform design and clutter mitigation. She is currently working on methods for adaptive radar, in particular, the investigation of optimal myopic and non-myopic solutions for advanced waveform and beam scheduling both for tracking and detection. Dr Suvorova is also involved in developing advanced tracking techniques. She has many publications in the above areas.

Dr Stephen Howard is a Senior Research Scientist in the Electronic Warfare and Radar Division at the Defence Science and Technology Organisation. He received his PhD in Applied Mathematics from Latrobe University in 1990. He joined the Australian Defence Science Technology Organisation in Air Operations Division in 1991 and shortly afterward moved to Electronic Warfare & Radar Division where he worked on the development of algorithms for the automatic analysis of intercepted radar signals. His particular expertise is in the area of radar signal detection, parameter estimation and classification algorithms for electronic surveillance, as well in advanced methods for passive surveillance and geolocation. Since 2003 he has worked in the area of phased array radar signal processing, including waveform design and radar resource management. He currently a active member of the Centre of Expertise in Networked Decision and Sensor Systems.