LPI Optimization Framework for Target Tracking in Radar Network Architectures Using Information-Theoretic Criteria

Widely distributed radar network architectures can provide significant performance improvement for target detection and localization. For a fixed radar network, the achievable target detection performance may go beyond a predetermined threshold with full transmitted power allocation, which is extremely vulnerable in modern electronic warfare. In this paper, we study the problem of low probability of intercept (LPI) design for radar network and propose two novel LPI optimization schemes based on information-theoretic criteria. For a predefined threshold of target detection, Schleher intercept factor is minimized by optimizing transmission power allocation among netted radars in the network. Due to the lack of analytical closed-form expression for receiver operation characteristics (ROC), we employ two information-theoretic criteria, namely, Bhattacharyya distance and J-divergence as the metrics for target detection performance. The resulting nonconvex and nonlinear LPI optimization problems associated with different information-theoretic criteria are cast under a unified framework, and the nonlinear programming based genetic algorithm (NPGA) is used to tackle the optimization problems in the framework. Numerical simulations demonstrate that our proposed LPI strategies are effective in enhancing the LPI performance for radar network.