On optimal resource allocation in multifunction radar systems

Recent studies have focused on the problem of resource allocation in systems in which multiple applications contend for multiple resources in order to satisfy their application level requirements. Multifunction radar system is an example of such a system in which multiple targets are tracked by the radar system simultaneously requiring processor and energy resources of the radar system. Lee et al. (2003) studied the problem of maximizing the overall tracking quality of the multifunction radar system by applying optimization procedures offline. The optimization methods employed in this work first considered the sampling frequency alone as a resource and optimized this resource by using the approach of Seto et al. (1996). Later in the same study, sampling frequency and computation time are attempted to be optimized together by using the Q-RAM approach. However, the method presented failed to be extendable to accommodate additional resource variables. In the present study, two improvements over the solution approach are presented. Firstly, the optimization problem for a tracking radar system is extended so as to enable the consideration of the average power of the transmitted signal as a resource which can be optimized besides sampling frequency and computation time. By this extension, a novel optimization algorithm is proposed to optimize the average power together with the sampling frequency and computation time. Secondly, it is also shown that the extendible method presented can also be applied for the two variable case and produce comparatively more favorable results as compared with the Q-RAM based solution.