Section: New Results

Simulation–based algorithms for the optimization of sensor deployment

Participant : François Le Gland.

This is a collaboration with Christian Musso (ONERA, Palaiseau) and with Sébastien Paris (LSIS, université du Sud Toulon Var), related with the supervision of the PhD thesis of Yannick Kenné.

The problem considered here can be described as follows: a limited number of sensors should be deployed by a carrier in a given area, and should be activated at a limited number of time instants within a given time period, so as to maximize the probability of detecting a target (present in the given area during the given time period). There is an information dissymmetry in the problem: if the target is sufficiently close to a sensor position when it is activated, then the target can learn about the presence and exact position of the sensor, and can temporarily modify its trajectory so as to escape away before it is detected. This is referred to as the target intelligence. Two different simulation–based algorithms have been designed to solve separately or jointly this optimization problem, with different and complementary features. One is fast, and sequential: it proceeds by running a population of targets and by dropping and activating a new sensor (or re–activating a sensor already available) where and when this action seems appropriate. The other is slow, iterative, and non–sequential; it proceeds by updating a population of deployment plans with guaranteed and increasing criterion value at each iteration, and for each given deployment plan, there is a population of targets running to evaluate the criterion. Finally, the two algorithms can cooperate in many different ways, to try and get the best of both approaches. A simple and efficient way is to use the deployment plans provided by the sequential algorithm as the initial population for the iterative algorithm.

This work has been presented at the Conference on Optimization and Practices in Industry (COPI), held in Palaiseau in October 2014.