Optimal Sensor Threshold Control and the Weapon Operating Characteristic for Autonomous Search and Attack Munitions

This thesis considers the optimal employment of a wide area search munition in a battlespace where a target is known to be uniformly distributed among false targets which are Poisson distributed. The Poisson distribution's parameter is obtained from readily available battlespace intelligence. This work formulates and solves the optimal control problem for deriving the optimal sensor threshold schedule in order to maximize the probability of attacking the target during the battlespace sweep while constraining the probability of attacking a false target. The e ciency gained by optimally varying the sensor threshold is compared against the performance achieved with a static, optimum sensor threshold setting. The Weapon Operating Characteristic, the relationship between maximum achievable probability of target attack and maximum allowable probability of false target attack, is developed.

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