A T Step Ahead Optimal Target Detection Algorithm for a Multi Sensor Surveillance System

TL;DR

This paper introduces an optimal motion strategy for mobile sensors in a multi sensor surveillance system to maximize target detection over T steps, with coordination to reduce overlaps and improve efficiency.

Contribution

It proposes a novel coordinated motion strategy for sensors that maximizes detections and minimizes overlaps, considering probabilistic target movement and computational constraints.

Findings

Outperforms existing multi-target tracking schemes in detection maximization

Effective coordination reduces overlapping detections significantly

Method demonstrates robustness under Poisson target movement assumptions

Abstract

This paper presents a methodology for optimal target detection in a multi sensor surveillance system. The system consists of mobile sensors that guard a rectangular surveillance zone crisscrossed by moving targets. Targets percolate the surveillance zone in a poisson fashion with uniform velocities. Under these statistics this paper computes a motion strategy for a sensor that maximizes target detections for the next T time steps. A coordination mechanism between sensors ensures that overlapping areas between sensors is reduced. This coordination mechanism is interleaved with the motion strategy computation to reduce detections of the same target by more than one sensor. To avoid an exhaustive search in the joint space of all sensors the coordination mechanism constraints the search by assigning priorities to the sensors. A comparison of this methodology with other multi target tracking schemes verifies its efficacy in maximizing detections. A tabulation of these comparisons is reported in results section of the paper