Multistatic Sensor Placement: A Tracking Approach

Sonar tracking using measurements from multistatic sensors has shown promise: there are benefits in terms of robustness, complementarity (covariance-ellipse intersection) and of course simply 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 known, so that the optimization is done in a continuous space. We consider "barrier" scenario and numbers of sensors. 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. Numerical results are given, these suggesting that certain sensor geometries should be used