Information-Based Control of Decentralised Sensor Networks

This chapter describes how formal information measures can be used as the basis for enabling decentralised, intelligent and autonomous control of large-scale sensor network resources, with widespread application throughout the military and security domain. These information measures are the result of filtering and fusing local sensor observations, assimilating the products over a communication network, and interpreting them in the wider context to infer underlying states of interest to the military or security operation. Information provides a currency against which a constrained set of sensing and communication actions can be valued, resulting in a single action or sequence of actions being executed. This is known as Information-Based Control (IBC). The main focus of this chapter is the problem of

decentralised

IBC in a large-scale sensor network, and its solution in terms of multi-agent system methodologies. Examples and applications, relevant to the military world, are used to highlight a number of important practical considerations.