RADAR Systems - Integration
User-specific integration of radar sensors:
- military
- law enforcement
- vessel traffic services (VTS)
Primary source of information are surveillance radars. Due to specific geographic location of sites and coverage pattern, simultaneous target detection from two or even more sensors is possible. To achieve information usability, data fusion is performed and tracked targets are uniquely identified by the alphanumeric labels, containing both the target and the source identification.
Local targets observations are stored in source database, Illustration 1, containing local identification, position, velocity and local time stamp. Fusion process is carried at equally spaced discrete time points, usually not bigger than the one antenna revolution. If data stream from local sensors is asynchronous, than all data is projected to a reference time frame, other words speaking, after projection, data from different sensors all have the same time stamp.
After data projection to a common reference time frame, observations from local sensors are associated with existing tracks. Usually, observation-track pair undergo some kind of statistical test, if test is positive, than observation under test updates particular track. If some observations are not associated with none of the existing tracks, that the new and tentative track is formed; similarly, if particular track hasn't been updated for specific time period, it is deleted. Track data are stored in output database, available to clients.
Data fusion process.