A Priority-Based Scheduling Scheme for Search, Track, and Communications in MPARS

The modern battlefield scenario is strongly influenced by the innovative capabilities of the multifunction phased array radars (MPARs) which can perform sequentially or in parallel a plethora of sensing and communication activities. As a matter of fact, the MPAR can functionally cluster its phased array into bespoke sub-apertures implementing different tasks. Accordingly, a portion of the other available resources, e.g., bandwidth, power-aperture product (PAP), and time, is also assigned to each sub-aperture and the grand challenge is the definition of strategies for an optimal scheduling of the tasks to be executed. In this respect, a rule-based algorithm for task scheduling is proposed in this paper. In a nutshell, in each time window, the procedure first allocates the radar tasks (viz. volume search, cued search, update and confirmation tracking) and then utilize the communication (COM) looks so as to fill the empty intra-slot time left by the radar tasks. When there are two concurrent looks, the allocation is performed according to their priorities. Moreover, if the bandwidth and PAP are sufficient, some of them can be also scheduled in parallel. Interesting results in term of bandwidth and time occupancy efficiency are observed from simulations conducted in challenging scenarios comprising also multiple maneuvering targets.