Intelligent sensor resource management using evolutionary computing techniques

Missile defense is moving toward a 'system of systems' approach creating a highly complex scheduling task for the overall battle manager. The battle management segment is responsible with managing all the available sensor resources for engagement planning and utilization of interceptor inventories. This has become a complex, at times intractable effort. To rectify the situation it has been suggested that battle manager tasking become more goal-oriented. This force a higher level of autonomy within individual sensing components, making the design of the sensor increasingly more challenging. Now each sensor will require a sophisticated sensor management processing scheme, which performs high-level intelligent resource scheduling. The sensor management process determines a viable solution for scheduling resources, including specifying parameters for the sensor activities of search, track, discrimination, and kill assessment. These activities are scheduled in accordance within the sensor constraints and limits. A proposed approach for sensor scheduling based on genetic algorithms (GA) is described.