Young Researcher Paper Award 2025
🥇Winners

Notice of retraction
Vol. 32, No. 8(2), S&M2292

Print: ISSN 0914-4935
Online: ISSN 2435-0869
Sensors and Materials
is an international peer-reviewed open access journal to provide a forum for researchers working in multidisciplinary fields of sensing technology.
Sensors and Materials
is covered by Science Citation Index Expanded (Clarivate Analytics), Scopus (Elsevier), and other databases.

Instructions to authors
English    日本語

Instructions for manuscript preparation
English    日本語

Template
English

Publisher
 MYU K.K.
 Sensors and Materials
 1-23-3-303 Sendagi,
 Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0022, Japan
 Tel: 81-3-3827-8549
 Fax: 81-3-3827-8547

MYU Research, a scientific publisher, seeks a native English-speaking proofreader with a scientific background. B.Sc. or higher degree is desirable. In-office position; work hours negotiable. Call 03-3827-8549 for further information.


MYU Research

(proofreading and recording)


MYU K.K.
(translation service)


The Art of Writing Scientific Papers

(How to write scientific papers)
(Japanese Only)

Sensors and Materials, Volume 38, Number 3(4) (2026)
Copyright(C) MYU K.K.
pp. 1695-1715
S&M4401 Report
https://doi.org/10.18494/SAM6238
Published: March 30, 2026

Bandwidth-aware Multimodal Sensor Data Prioritization for Multi-unmanned Surface Vehicle Tracking Using Dynamic Marine Attention Network [PDF]

Lu Wen, Jiayi Wen, Xiaorong Zhang, Yan Li, and Qiang Wang

(Received January 29, 2026; Accepted March 19, 2026)

Keywords: marine sensing, sensor data prioritization, deep reinforcement learning (DRL), multimodal sensors, LiDAR/radar/sonar

The deployment of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) for autonomous maritime operations requires robust target tracking based on multimodal marine sensing under stochastic ocean environments. However, conventional tracking methods suffer from high-dimensional sensor noise and limitations in onboard sensing resources and the computational burden of multiagent coordination. We developed the dynamic marine attention network (DyMAN), a sensing-oriented multiagent deep reinforcement learning framework integrated with an ensemble hard attention mechanism and game theory. By utilizing a centralized critic and distributed actor architecture, DyMAN mitigates multiagent nonstationarity while ensuring decentralized execution. To address the limitations of onboard hardware, a hard attention mechanism is integrated to prioritize informative sensor data, effectively filtering environmental noise from light detection and ranging and radio detection and ranging data, and improving the efficiency of multimodal sensor data processing by focusing computational resources on important targets. The Nash equilibrium is also integrated to ensure stable cooperative sensing and coordination and reduce decision conflicts among the USVs in the fleet. The experimental results demonstrate that DyMAN outperforms baseline algorithms, including multiagent deep deterministic policy gradient, deep deterministic policy gradient, and proximal policy optimization in terms of cumulative reward and convergence stability. DyMAN maintains a stabilized minimum interagent distance of approximately 40 units, which is a 50% improvement in formation stability compared with that in early training, and significantly reduces tracking error and energy consumption. The results of DyMAN provide a computational framework for distributed marine sensing nodes, enhancing the reliability and efficiency of multimodal sensing systems in complex maritime environments.

Corresponding author: Jiayi Wen


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Cite this article
Lu Wen, Jiayi Wen, Xiaorong Zhang, Yan Li, and Qiang Wang, Bandwidth-aware Multimodal Sensor Data Prioritization for Multi-unmanned Surface Vehicle Tracking Using Dynamic Marine Attention Network, Sens. Mater., Vol. 38, No. 3, 2026, p. 1695-1715.



Forthcoming Regular Issues


Forthcoming Special Issues

Special Issue on Novel Sensors, Materials, and Related Technologies on Artificial Intelligence of Things Applications
Guest editor, Teen-Hang Meen (National Formosa University), Wenbing Zhao (Cleveland State University), and Cheng-Fu Yang (National University of Kaohsiung)
Call for paper


Special Issue on Advanced GeoAI for Smart Cities: Novel Data Modeling with Multi-source Sensor Data
Guest editor, Prof. Changfeng Jing (China University of Geosciences Beijing)
Call for paper


Special Issue on Advanced Sensor Application Development
Guest editor, Shih-Chen Shi (National Cheng Kung University) and Tao-Hsing Chen (National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology)
Call for paper


Special Issue on Mobile Computing and Ubiquitous Networking for Smart Society
Guest editor, Akira Uchiyama (The University of Osaka) and Jaehoon Paul Jeong (Sungkyunkwan University)
Call for paper


Special Issue on Advanced Materials and Technologies for Sensor and Artificial- Intelligence-of-Things Applications (Selected Papers from ICASI 2026)
Guest editor, Sheng-Joue Young (National Yunlin University of Science and Technology)
Conference website
Call for paper


Special Issue on Biosensing Devices
Guest editor, Kiyotaka Sasagawa (Nara Institute of Science and Technology)
Call for paper


Copyright(C) MYU K.K. All Rights Reserved.