title: Optimal scheduling of multiple sensors in continuous time.
abstract: This paper considers an optimal sensor scheduling problem in continuous time. In order to make the model more close to the practical problems, suppose that the following conditions are satisfied: only one sensor may be active at any one time; an admissible sensor schedule is a piecewise constant function with a finite number of switches; and each sensor either doesn't operate or operates for a minimum non-negligible amount of time. However, the switching times are unknown, and the feasible region isn't connected. Thus, it's difficult to solve the problem by conventional optimization techniques. To overcome this difficulty, by combining a binary relaxation, a time-scaling transformation and an exact penalty function, an algorithm is developed for solving this problem. Numerical results show that the algorithm is effective.
authors.affiliation: School of Automation, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, PR China; Key Laboratory of Measurement and Control of CSE, Ministry of Education, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, PR China; School of Electrical and Information Engineering, Hunan Institute of Technology, Hengyang 421002, PR China. Electronic address: seuwuxiang@163.com.
authors.forename: Xiang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: School of Automation, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, PR China; Key Laboratory of Measurement and Control of CSE, Ministry of Education, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, PR China. Electronic address: kjzhang@seu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Kanjian
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: School of Automation, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, PR China; Key Laboratory of Measurement and Control of CSE, Ministry of Education, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, PR China. Electronic address: cysun@seu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Changyin
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Sun
keywords: Exact penalty function; Optimal control; Sensor scheduling; Stochastic systems; Time-scaling transformation