MULTIPLE UAV TASK ALLOCATION FOR AN ELECTRONIC WARFARE MISSION COMPARING GENETIC ALGORITHMS AND SIMULATED ANNEALING (PREPRINT)

Abstract —This paper compares two algorithms applied to the task allocation of multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for an electronic warfare mission. The electronic warfare mission scenario is discussed and a review of both the genetic algorithm and simulated annealing algorithm is given. The encoding of the problem and the functions and operations needed to implement each algorithm is outlined and compared. The algorithms were implemented and tested in Matlab. A discussion of the performance analysis for the time to convergence and quality of solutions in a fixed period of time is given. I. I NTRODUCTION he Electronic Warfare (EW) scenario investigated in our research assumes that a number of air vehicles are used to attack enemy air defense targets. The location of potential targets is detected and vehicles are sent to classify the target as a threat or non-threat. If the target is classified as a threat, then a vehicle must attack the target. We assume that there is a circular threat zone around each enemy air defense target and that if a UAV breeches this zone it can be fired on. In order to get into range for the attack, we assume that a jamming vehicle must be engaged to reduce the capability of the threat to track the attacking vehicle. When the threat tracking capabilities have been reduced, the attacking vehicle can proceed with the attack task. After the attack, a vehicle must verify that the threat has been destroyed. This mission described in the paper has the following basic assumptions: 1. A priori knowledge of the battle space. Possible target locations are known before mission begins. 2. There are four tasks to perform on each target: classify, jam, attack, and verify. 3. The vehicles are all Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (UCAVs) but are outfitted with different payloads. 4. Vehicles have sensors that can allow them to accomplish the classify task out of harms way before jamming starts. 5. Vehicles outfitted with jamming equipment are only tasked to do jamming.