A Novel Method to Quantitatively Measure the Capability of Detection System Based on Information Theory

There are a large amount of detection resources in future battlefield. Distributed and networked detection system has become the basic form of future warfare. However, there is no uniform measure and analysis tool for the systematic detection capability. Aiming at the problem, new capability measure method for the detection system is proposed in the paper based on the information theory. With the presented method, the capability of single detection equipment in the detection system is measured based on information entropy. Also, the capability of multiple detection equipments is measured based on joint entropy. In addition, the capability of single equipment’s contribution to detection system is given based on information gain (IG). Meanwhile, these capability measure methods are applied to multi-static radars tracking phase. The results show that the capability measure method is effective and feasible.