Tradeoff Between Dwell Time and Frequency of Revisits of Sensors.
Abstract
The Department of Defense has expressed heightened interest in managing information processes related to combat operations. This has highlighted the analytic community's need for information-related analysis methods, which begs the question of how to measure combat information. One measure, called "information gain", has been developed and applied at the U.S. Military Academy in recent years. Information gain is based on modeling a tactical commander's uncertainty about his adversary's state (location of enemy units, for example) using probability distributions are "updated", using Bayes' formula and target movement characteristics. Information gain is defined to be the decrease in Shannon's entropy from the prior to the posterior situations. An impression can be gained of the growth in potential "situation awareness" of a commander by plotting cumulative information gain over time, as data from various sources are received. An issue related to the design architecture of certain sensor systems is the tradeoff between sensor dwell time and frequency of revisits of the sensor. We have implemented information gain analysis in a simple model of sensor coverage and target movement, and have examined the cumulative information gain over a sequence of time steps. The model is implemented in a simulation written in Visual Basic. It allows examination of the effects of changes in a variety of parameters of interest. We have examined effects on information gain of varying dwell times under a number of conditions. One results is an indication that larger dwell times may have an advantage over more frequent visits when targets are quite mobile.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 01, 1998
- Accession Number
- ADA361098
Entities
People
- Don Barr
Organizations
- United States Military Academy