<title>Sensor management in a sensor-rich environment</title>

Abstract

This paper presents an adaptation of a comprehensive sensor management model, initially developed for C3I applications, to a new class of problems, a data rich, information poor, sensor rich environment. The sensor management model described is a hybrid distributed and hierarchical model in which the sensor scheduling function is distributed across system functional or physical boundaries with global oversight of mission goals and information requests maintained by a centralized Mission Manager. The introduction of a meta-scheduler block is only a n artifact of the opportunity afforded by the large number of sensors to implement a natural subdivision of a single sensor schedule into several spatially distributed sensor schedulers. System performance is enhanced by allowing local autonomy at the sensor, by distributing sensor scheduling among subsystems, and through an interrupt driven process in which local sensor measurements are abstracted to obtain global context. An aircraft health and usage monitoring system, a contemporary example of a sensor rich environment, is used to illustrate the issues involved in extending sensor management beyond C3I environments.© (2000) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.