Optimal platform placement and configuration in networked electronic warfare (EW)

Abstract

In this work, we investigate dynamic resource allocation in a networked electronic warfare (EW) environment. In particular, we study the problem of placing EW capable nodes, including both electronic attack (EA) and electronic support (ES) nodes, to collaboratively carry out missions. We first provide a general formulation of the platform placement. The objective is to minimize the cost associated with the placement of both EA and ES nodes, while satisfying the requirement of jamming coverage and network connectivity. Since the placement problem is NP-hard, we next propose two heuristics that can provide good solutions with reasonable computational efficiency. Via several representative case studies, we evaluate the performance of the proposed heuristics.