Efficient Sensor Management for Optimal Multi-Task Performance (ES-MaTe)

The vision of the Efficient Sensor Management for Optimal Multi-Task Performance (ES-MaTe) initiative is to develop technology that will enable C2BMC to plan and manage multiple sensor resources in order to support dynamic planning for defense against hostile multi-raid missile attack. BMDS uses multiple disparate and spatially separated sensors to support tracking, in flight target update of threat state vectors and discrimination state and provide kill assessment. Each of these tasks minimizes the uncertainty in estimation of an underlying stochastic process. The estimation uncertainty for each task must be managed based on relative importance in order to maximize battle awareness. The ES-MaTe sensor resource manager (SRM) function assigns sensors in a manner that maximizes mutual information and reduces the estimation uncertainties. Further, the ES-MaTe non-myopic multi-sensor SRM employs approximate dynamic programming techniques to address the complexity arising from combinatorial explosion. The Phase II project will: (i) refine, extend, and harden ES-MaTe algorithms to improve efficiency and reliability; (ii) design ES-MaTe framework architecture for SRM technology that may be plugged with supporting tools; (iii) integrate, test, and validate ES-MaTe technology within a high fidelity simulation environment; and (iv) formulate an approach for technology transition to the C2BMC and commercialization.