Acquisition, Tracking and Pointing Technologies

Current acquisition, tracking and pointing (ATP) technologies employ optical image processing and/or inertial measurement unit (IMU) data to mitigate image jitter in critical air and space borne targeting applications. Image processing is typically performed using the Kalman filter or some variant thereof, despite the fact that these filters have known shortcomings. In general, they are ill suited for nonlinearly moving targets which is exactly what would be observed in a jittering image stream. Recent development of an enhanced image processor based on the Particle Filter Algorithm (PFA) is attractive because, among other advantages, PFAs inherently handle target nonlinearities. The enhanced PFA has been designed to improve speed, compensate jitter and reduce detectable target SNR through the incorporation of a number of preprocessing components. Polaris Sensor Technologies proposes to further advance this PFA through the development of additional preprocessing components designed to better exploit the image information. Additionally, a study into the potentially substantial advantages of fusing PFA processed imagery and IMU data to improve ATP accuracy we be conducted. The proposed effort has direct relevance to a number of MDA programs including legacy and future interceptors such as THAAD, SM3-IIB, and airborne surveillance assets such as ALTB, ABIR and PTSS.