Sensor Operation Deployment with Multiple Routes per Asset

In many reconnaissance and surveillance tasks, the challenge is to deploy a considerable set of assets in the best manner for satisfying a set of given information requirements. This publication describes the mathematical and methodical foundations of an approach to support operators at this demanding task via an automatic planning component. The automatic planning component can be used as part of a two-step approach for resource-optimal sensor scheduling. In this publication, we present an extension of our previous work which additionally includes the aspect that, in practice, often an asset can be deployed multiple times within a given planning period. The extension is done on basis of a beforehand survey of suitable state-of-the art approaches. We present a detailed mathematical problem formulation, which in essence corresponds to an optimization problem under a considerable set of constraints, and describe design and implementation of the algorithm for performing the optimization. Different aspects and results with regard to evaluation demonstrate the validity and performance of our approach.