Weapon target assignment problem: multi-objective formulation, optimisation using MOPSO and TOPSIS

Abstract

In this paper, a static weapon target assignment problem is studied by optimising the conflicting criteria like shooting failure and number of weapons used to destroy the targets. The inherent intractability and conflicting objectives of this problem motivated us to use multi-objective particle swarm optimisation (MOPSO) to uncover the true Pareto front. We first employ the MOPSO to uncover the Pareto front. Secondly, a ranking method called techniques for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) is used to sort the non-dominated solutions by the preference of decision maker (DM). A numerical experiment on two test cases has been conducted to realise the efficacy of the method. The experimental work is offering large number of solutions in the Pareto front, which may create problem to DM for effective decision. Therefore, by TOPSIS a prioritised set of non-dominated solutions is provided to DM, which fits the preference under different situations.