Paper

Multistatic Sensor Placement: A Tracking Approach

Volume Number:
2
Issue Number:
1
Pages:
Starting page
22
Ending page
34
Publication Date:
Publication Date
1 June 2007
Author(s)
O. Erdinc, P. Willett, S. Coraluppi

paper Menu

Abstract

Active sonar tracking using measurements from multistatic sensors has shown promise: there are benefits in terms of robustness, complementarity (covariance-ellipse intersection) and of course sim-ply due to the increased probability of detection that naturally accrues from a well-designed data fusion system. It is not always clear what the placement of the sources and receivers that gives the best fused measurement covariance for any target–or at least for any target that is of interest–might be. In this paper, we investigate the problem as one of global optimization, in which the objective is to maximize the information provided to the tracker. We assume that the number of sensors is given, so that the optimization is done in a continuous space. The strong variability of target strength as a function of aspect is integral to the cost function we optimize. Doppler information is not discarded when constant frequency (Doppler-sensitive) waveforms are available. The optimal placements that result are consistent with our intuition, suggesting that our placement strategy may provide a useful tool in more complex scenarios where intuition is challenged.