**Lintao Ding 1, Chenguang Shi 1,2,\*, Wei Qiu <sup>1</sup> and Jianjiang Zhou <sup>1</sup>**


Received: 6 January 2020; Accepted: 25 February 2020; Published: 26 February 2020

**Abstract:** Radar network systems have been demonstrated to offer numerous advantages for target tracking. In this paper, a low probability of intercept (LPI)-based joint dwell time and bandwidth optimization strategy is proposed for multi-target tracking in a radar network. Since the Bayesian Cramer–Rao lower bound (BCRLB) provides a lower bound on parameter estimation, it can be utilized as the accuracy metric for target tracking. In this strategy, in order to improve the LPI performance of the radar network, the total dwell time consumption of the underlying system is minimized, while guaranteeing a predetermined tracking accuracy. There are two adaptable parameters in the optimization problem: one for dwell time, and the other for bandwidth allocation. Since the nonlinear programming-based genetic algorithm (NPGA) can solve the nonlinear problem well, we develop a method based upon NPGA to solve the resulting problem. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed strategy has superiority over traditional algorithms, and can achieve a better LPI performance of this radar network.

**Keywords:** low probability of intercept (LPI); Bayesian Cramer–Rao lower bound (BCRLB); multi-target tracking; radar network
