Sensor Placement Analyzer

SPA CCR conceived and developed the Sensor Placement Analyzer (SPA), a tool for determining near-optimal deployment positions for networks of ground-based and airborne SIGINT assets. SPA is currently deployed in the Army's All-Source Analysis System. The objective of SIGINT asset deployment as implemented in SPA is two-fold:

1. Maximize the probability of detecting an emitter within a given named area of interest (NAI)
2. Minimize the geolocational error of an emitter within an NAI.

A number of constraints govern the asset deployment problem, including the physical characteristics of the assets themselves, terrain features, required standoff distances, and known threats. In addition, communications paths among all network assets must be guaranteed. SPA SPA uses the optimization technique known as simulated annealing to search combinations of potential deployment locations, assessing each combination according to the above constraints. As computation progresses, the search space gradually becomes smaller, thus converging to a near-optimal configuration.