Underwater Sensor Field Design using Game Theory

• Main Authors: Golen, Erik F., Shenoy, Nirmala, Incze, Bruce Imre
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Subjects: Acoustic sensors; Acoustic signal detection; Game theory; Marine vehicles; Protection; Sensor phenomena and characterization; Underwater acoustics; Underwater communication; Underwater vehicles; Water
• ISSN: 2155-7578; 2155-7586
• DOI: 10.1109/MILCOM.2007.4455120

When designing a field of passive underwater sensors, a series of assumptions are typically made, with one of the more glaring being range independence throughout an operational area. It is unlikely that a large water space will have uniform acoustic characteristics, meaning that the performance of a sensor will vary based on its physical location. Considering that a threat may also have knowledge of the acoustics of an area, a field designer could divide the area into sectors based on changes in acoustics and predict how often a threat submarine will visit each sector of the area to increase the field's submarine detection capabilities. In this work, an operational area is split up into four quadrants with varying acoustic characteristics and the probability of visitation to each quadrant by a threat submarine is determined using game theory. A new Game Theory Field Design (GTFD) model is proposed that properly allocates sensors to each quadrant according to the visitation probabilities. When compared with a random field design model that does not consider these probabilities, GTFD is shown to offer a significant improvement in terms of detection capability.