Joint Optimization of Target Tracking and Communication in a Shared Network

We present and compare numerically three methods to determine the optimal configurations of a network of agents for the joint tasks of communication and target tracking. The first two methods, “Tracking first”(TF) and “Communication first”(CF), rely on an iterative procedure where the two tasks take turns in individually optimizing the network and differ in the choice of the startup task. The third method, “Simultaneous optimization”(SO), accounts for optimization constraints of both tasks and satisfies them simultaneously. Method TF yields the best results in terms of cost, while method SO is the fastest.