Optimal Cooperative Sensing using a Team of UAVs

Author

Gu, G. ; Chandler, P.R. ; Schumacher, C.J. ; Sparks, A. ; Pachter, M.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Louisiana State Univ., Baton Rouge, LA

Volume

42

Issue

4

fYear

2006

fDate

10/1/2006 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1446

Lastpage

1458

Abstract

The authors investigates the joint optimal estimation of both the position and velocity of a ground moving target (GMT) using pulse Doppler radars on-board unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The problem of cooperative estimation using a UAV team and the optimization of the team´s configuration to achieve optimal GMT position and velocity estimates are addressed. Based on the Cramer-Rao bound, the minimum achievable error variance of the GMT position and velocity estimates is derived. The expression of the minimum achievable estimation error variance for unbiased estimation provided by the Cramer-Rao bound is minimized yielding the optimal configuration of the UAV team. Our solution is complete in that it addresses various GMT tracking scenarios and an arbitrary number of UAVs. Optimal sensor geometries for typical applications are illustrated

Keywords

Doppler radar; airborne radar; error analysis; military radar; radar tracking; remotely operated vehicles; sensor fusion; target tracking; Cramer-Rao bound; UAV; arbitrary number; estimation error variance; ground moving target position; joint optimal estimation; optimal cooperative sensing; optimal sensor geometries; pulse Doppler radars; tracking scenarios; unmanned aerial vehicles; Application software; Doppler radar; Estimation error; Geometry; Pulse measurements; Radar tracking; Sparks; State estimation; Unmanned aerial vehicles; Yield estimation;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Aerospace and Electronic Systems, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9251

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TAES.2006.314584

Filename

4107987