Scheduling target surveillance and reconnaissance tasks for diverse ISR assets of a tactical echelon

Abstract

We examine a scheduling problem that assigns various ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) assets to the targets to be monitored for each time slot, that is, determines the target to be watched by each asset on each time. We first propose SR (Surveillance and Reconnaissance) Index that determines the surveillance and reconnaissance effectiveness of a pair of an ISR asset and a target. We use an AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) method to quantify amount of information acquired from the ISR assets and Army Combat Force Index for relative importance of the targets. We identify constraints and objectives as well as scheduling decisions. We then develop a mixed integer programming model for determining optimal scheduling decisions. The ISR scheduling problem is equivalent to an open-shop scheduling problem with preemption, which is known to be NP (Nondeterministic Polynomial Time)-hard problem. Due to the computational complexity and problem size, we develop an efficient heuristic scheduling rule called order-flow (OF), which assigns the pairs of ISR asset and target in the order of SR Index size. We also develop a genetic algorithm. We compare the computational performance of the three solution methods. Finally, by using OF scheduling rule, we examine the scheduling decisions and schedules to scenarios which are defined based on OP (Operation Plan) & IPB (Intelligence Preparation of the battlefield) data. We discuss validity of the proposed SR Index and scheduling model, examine the characteristics of the optimal ISR schedules, and derive insights and strategies for ISR asset scheduling.