Optimal Control of the Weapon Operating Characteristic with Control Inequality Constraints

Abstract

Optimal employment of autonomous wide area search munitions or unmanned aerial vehicles is considered. The air vehicle searches a battle space for stationary targets in the presence of false targets and/or clutter. A control problem is formulated to achieve optimal scheduling of the control variables P _TR , the probability of target report, which is a reflection of the sensor’s threshold setting, and Q, the area coverage rate. These optimal control problem formulations yield solutions that maximize the probability of target attack while at the same time also satisfying hard bounds on the probability of false target attacks. Analysis has shown that the optimal solutions are sensitive to the particular relationship between the sensor’s receiver operating characteristic parameter, c, and area coverage rate, Q. In this chapter, several different heuristics for this particular relationship are studied and the optimal dynamic schedules of the sensor threshold and area coverage rate are obtained.

The views expressed in this chapter are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the United States Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government. This material is declared a work of the U.S. Government and is not subject to copyright protection in the United States.