NUMERICA CORPORATION — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: AF212-0007

Description

Numerica proposes an agile approach to distributed coherent beamforming for ad-hoc mobile sensor networks.  The key novel elements of our approach include: (1) computational sensing approach to multi-sensor data fusion for target detection and parameter estimation leveraging multi-scan, multi-sensor data, (2) adaptive use of multiple potential radar modes such as MIMO cohere-on-receive, full cohere-on-transmit and hybrid solutions allowing graceful degradation in the presence of increasing PNT uncertainties, (3) exploration of novel beamforming approaches intended to reap the benefits of fully-coherent beam-forming in the near-field of widely-deployed sensors and amendable for use by search modes to provide enhanced detection range, (4) utilization of advanced optimization-based techniques for agile sensor resource management that is able to rapidly adapt to changing deployment of the mobile sensor network, quality of the PNT solution, and evolving threats.  The SRM solution must balance multiple objectives of search, precision tracking, and discrimination/identification.  It schedules tasks and assigns sensors to task in a manner intended to maximize the net benefit of the sensor network in the face of multiple objectives, whether it be by multi-tasking (assigning nodes to disjoint tasks that can be executed in parallel) or coordination (assigning multiple sensors to collaborate on a given task).