Patent ID: 8862704

Claim:
A system for managing nodes on a network, comprising: a plurality of nodes, each node reporting a sensor data to every other node of said plurality of nodes, and each node including a tracker for fusing a plurality of said sensor data from said plurality of nodes into a target track using a data fusion algorithm; a tracker manager monitoring said trackers and modifying said data fusion algorithm to change between a faster processing mode and a higher quality processing mode based at least in part upon a volume of said plurality of said sensor data received by a tracker; and a clustering unit that groups said plurality of nodes into a plurality of subnets; wherein said tracker manager modifies said data fusion algorithm based at least in part upon a criteria selected from the group consisting of a data accuracy requirement, a data priority requirement, and a mission objective requirement; wherein each node of said plurality of nodes reports said sensor data to each of the other nodes in said plurality of nodes by sending a sensor message to the reported-to node at a first rate if the reporting node and the reported-to node are in a same subnet, and at a second rate if the reporting node and the reported-to node are in a different subnet, said second rate being substantially lower than said first rate; and wherein said clustering unit groups said plurality of nodes as a function of a connection time during which one or more of said nodes has shared a direct connectivity communications link with another of said nodes, and as a function of an environmental impairment of the direct connectivity communications link between said one or more of said nodes and said another of said nodes.