Hybrid Pursuit-Evasion Game between UAVs and RF Emitters with Controllable Observations: A Hawk-Dove Game

Abstract

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can be used to chase radio frequency (RF) emitters by sensing the signal sent out by the RF emitters. Meanwhile, the RF emitter can evade from the UAVs, thus forming a pursuit-evasion game. In contrast to traditional pursuit-evasion games, in which the players can always observe each other, the RF emitter can stop transmitting such that the UAVs lose the target. However, stopping the transmission also incurs cost to the RF emitter since it can no longer convey information to destinations. Hence, the RF emitter can take both continuous actions, i.e., the moving direction, and discrete actions, i.e., whether to stop transmission. Meanwhile, there are both discrete states, i.e., whether the RF transmitter is transmitting, and continuous states, i.e., the locations of UAVs and RF emitter, thus forming a hybrid system. We will study the game theoretic properties of this novel game and derive the optimal strategies for both parties under certain assumptions.