Joint Path Planning and Power Allocation for Multitarget Tracking in Multistatic Radar

Multistatic radar systems have the advantage of practiacability and potential tracking capabilities over traditional monostatic radar systems. They can be improved by optimizing limited power and efficient deployment of sensors for multitarget tracking applications. This paper presents a joint path planning and power allocation (JPPPA) strategy for tracking multiple targets in a multistatic radar system having a fixed transmitter and multiple moving receivers. The proposed approach optimizes and controls the allocation scheme for transmitted power and the receivers’ path to obtain accurate speed and heading angle estimation. To measure the optimal performance of an unbiased estimating approach, the Posterior Cramer-Ratio Lower Bound (PCRLB) is derived and used as the basis for the resource management strategy. A modified genetic algorithm (GA) with a custom pre-selection operator is developed to determine the power allocation scheme and sensor movement simultaneously. A receding horizon control (RHC) framework is applied to offer fault tolerance and provide the system with long-term guidance. Results show that the tracking performance in terms of estimation accuracy can be improved using the JPPPA strategy. The effectiveness of the proposed pre-selection operator is verified through comparison with ordinary genetic algorithm.