Exploiting Small Boat Wake Signatures for Improved Threat Classification and Feature Aided Tracking

Naval forces conducting transits through straits and other congested littoral operational areas are presented with a challenging force protection requirement. Surface traffic density is often high, with many ferries, fishing, pleasure boats, and large cargo ships maneuvering in a small area. An important technical challenge for maritime wide area surveillance is to identify high valued naval vessels (HVVs) in open water as well as in littoral zones. At present, airborne surveillance radars only exploit the hard-body signature of the boat itself for detection and long-term tracking of small boat threats in congested littoral environments. For small maneuvering vessels, the wake can dominate the hard body signature and the sea spikes and breaking wave induced false alarms can overload the fingerprinting and classification algorithms. This effort will seek to supplement those hard-body signatures by exploiting and merging the characteristics of boat generated wake signatures that are detectable by airborne maritime surveillance and imaging radar systems.