We design and analyze the performance of cooperative search strategies for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) searching for moving, possibly evading, targets in a hazardous environment. Rather than engaging in independent sensing missions, the sensing agents (UAVs with sensors) "work together" by arranging themselves into a flight configuration that optimizes their integrated sensing capability. If a UAV is shot down by enemy fire, the team adapts by reconfiguring its topology to optimally continue the mission with the surviving assets. We present a cooperative search methodology that integrates the multiple agents into an advantageous formation that distinctively enhances the sensing and detection operations of the system while minimizing the transmission of excessive control information for adaptation of the team's topology. After analyzing our strategy to determine the performance tradeoff between search time and number of UAVs employed, we present an algorithm that selects the minimum number of UAVs to deploy in order to meet a targeted search time within probabilistic guarantees.

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A6strac&-A class of point processes that possess intensity functions are studied. The processes of this class, which seem to include most point processes of practical interest, are called regular point processes (RPP's). Expressions for the evolution of these processes and especially for their joint occurrence statistics are derived. Compound RPP's, which are RPP's whose intensity functions are themselves stochastic processes, are shown to be RPP's whose intensity functions are given as the causal minimum mean-squared-error (MMSE) estimates of the given intensity functions. The superposition of two independent RPP's is shown to yield an RPP whose intensity is given as a causal least squares estimate of the appropriate combination of the two given intensity functions. A general likelihood-ratio formula for the detection of compound RPP's is obtained. Singular detection cases are characterized. Detection procedures that use only the total number of counts are discussed. As an example, the optimal detection scheme for signals of the randomtelegraph type with unknown transition intensities is derived.