Information instantiation in sensor management
Kenneth J. Hintz, Gregory A. McIntyre · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1998
One of the tasks associated with a heterogeneous, multi-sensor system is the determination of which function to perform (search, track, or identification). Previous work by the authors has focused on the use of the information gain attributable to a reduction in the kinematic, identification, or search uncertainty as a useful cost function for making the trade-off among the possible uses of a sensor. This view has been subsumed as a subcomponent of a new approach (not covered here) which quantitatively apportions goal-values ordered in a lattice among the several tasks. That is, rather than use an information measure to determine whether to search, track, or identification, an information instantiator is used to determine when to schedule the next observations of a target in order to insure that tracks are maintained, areas of uncertainty are searched, and important targets identified. The scheduling of these observations among the various sensors is optimized separately using the previously developed OGUPSA algorithm. Information instantiation is a collection of methods used to convert information needs at the mission management level to the actual type of measurement(s) to make. This paper describes these methods which are used to schedule measurements of search areas with associated probabilities of detection to meet search information needs, obtain measurements of a target in track to reduce its kinematic uncertainty to a specified level, and to reduce the uncertainty about a target's identity as both a specific information gain in identification and capitalize on that ID to increase target track accuracy. A brief description and block diagram of our complete sensor management model is also presented to show the interrelationship of the information instantiator to the other components.