*Article* **A Lévy Distribution Based Searching Scheme for the Discrete Targets in Vast Region**

**Zhigang Lian 1, Dan Luo 2,\*, Bingrong Dai 3 and Yangquan Chen 4**


**Abstract:** This paper investigates the *Discrete Targets Search Problem, (DTSP)*, which aims to quickly search for discrete objects scattered in a vast symmetry region. Different from continuous function extremal value search, the discrete points search cannot make use of the properties of regular functions, such as function analytic, single/multiple extreme, and monotonicity. Thus, in this paper a new search scheme based on Lévy random distribution is investigated. In comparison with the *Traditional Carpet* search or *Random* search based on other distributions, *DTSP* can provide much faster search speed which is demonstrated by simulation with different scales problems for the selected scenarios. The simulations experiment proves that *DTSP* is faster for searching for a discrete single target or multiple targets in a wide area. It provides a new method for solving the discrete target search problem.

**Keywords:** discrete targets search; grid search/traditional carpet search; uniform distribution search; *Lévy distribution* search; targets search optimization; vast symmetry region
