Anticipation in cognitive radar using stochastic control

Previous works have identified key characteristics of a cognitive radar, such as knowledge exploitation, perception, action, memory, intelligence and attention. In this work, it is argued that the cognitive characteristic of anticipation can also enhance radar performance. In this paper it is shown that radar management using a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) enables the radar to act with anticipation. A method using policy rollout is applied to approximate a POMDP for a target tracking control problem. Through a simulated example it is demonstrated how the anticipative method departs from a purely adaptive approach, and the subsequent improvement in performance is quantified.