Optimal adaptive waveform selection for target tracking

Modern phased array radars, with flexible waveform generation and beam steering capability, are able to adaptively modify their performance to suit a variety of environments. This power has not yet been fully exploited, in part because of the lack of suitable scheduling algorithms. This paper describes an optimal adaptive waveform selection algorithm for target tracking. An adaptive scheduling algorithm that selects the waveforms to be used in future epochs based on current estimates of the environment has the potential to significantly improve tracking performance. This paper describes such a scheduling algorithm, which is designed by posing the problem of adaptive waveform scheduling for target tracking as a stochastic dynamic programming problem. The result is a scheduling algorithm that minimises target tracking errors. The performance of the algorithm is illustrated by comparing the tracking errors produced by this approach in comparison to a fixed waveform schedule.