The issue of resource management arises with any sensor which is capable either of sensing only a part of its total field of view at any one time, or which is capable of having a number of operating modes, or both.
A very simple example is a camera with a telephoto lens. The photographer has to decide what he is going to photograph, and whether to zoom in to get high resolution on a part of the scene, or zoom out to see more of the scene. Very similar issues apply, of course, to electro-optical sensors (visible light or infra-red 'TV' cameras) and to radars.
The subject has, perhaps, been most extensively studied in relation to multi mode/multi function radars, where approaches such as neural networks, genetic algorithms and auction mechanisms have been proposed as well as more deterministic mangement schemes, but the methods which have actually been implemented have been much more primitive.
The use of multiple, disparate, sensors on multiple mobile, especially airborne, platforms adds further degrees of freedom to the problem - an extension is of growing interest.
The presentation will briefly review the problem for both the single-sensor and the multi-platform cases, and some of the approaches which have been proposed, and will highlight the remaining current problems.