Uncertain Sensor–Weapon–Target Allocation Problem Based on Uncertainty Theory

The sensor–weapon–target allocation (S-WTA) is a typical collaborative task allocation problem involved in network-centric warfare (NCW). The existing related studies have a limitation to the nature of cooperation and uncertainty in an air defense battle scenario, and most existing models have the assumption that they are determinate, i.e., the parameters in them are known certainly. For the actual battlefield environment, the asymmetric information in it could lead to the failure of the above assumption, and there are many uncertainties whose frequency can not be evaluated objectively. Based on uncertainty theory, this paper studied the S-WTA problem in an indeterminate battlefield environment. First, we analyze the uncertain factors existing in the actual battlefield environment and their influence on the S-WTA problem, and by considering the threat value of the target, the deviation parameters of the sensor tracking performance and weapon interception performance as uncertain variables, we then establish an uncertain S-WTA (USWTA) model, where the destruction value to targets is regarded as an objective function and four categories of typical constraints are set. Further, an equivalent transformation is presented to convert the unsolvable model into a determinate one by the expected value principle. To solve the proposed model efficiently, a permutation-based representation for the allocation scheme of the USWTA problem is introduced firstly, which can construct a feasible solution efficiently, and on this basis, a constructive heuristic algorithm based on maximum marginal return rule (MMRCH) is designed to construct a feasible solution with high quality. Additionally, a local search (LS) operation is proposed to explore for the better solution locally and further improve the quality of solution obtained by MMRCH. Finally, a set of instances are set to be solved by the designed algorithm, and the simulation experiment demonstrates the superiority of the designed algorithm and the feasibility of the proposed model