Network-Centric Urban Vigilance

SET Corporation proposes to develop layered sensing concepts for tracking insurgents in urban scenarios. In particular, we develop joint cross-platform RF/EO-IR tracking concepts. RF sensor systems are being developed to track dismounts from ranges of 10km or more. Such radars use multiple along-track channels to suppress stationary clutter and may use multi-resolution waveforms to characterize dismount signatures in range and Doppler. A typical limitation of such standoff RF systems is cross-range location accuracy; a CEP90 > 15m is not uncommon. This leads to serious track ambiguities when several dismounts are traveling together. We explore the use of a closer-range video EO-IR platform, working cooperatively with the standoff RF platform in a layered sensing construct, to mitigate the RF cross-range location limitations. In particular, we consider a narrow field of view EO-IR video platform operating at ranges of 3km - 6km that can position itself so as to resolve, in angle, the dismounts that are range-doppler ambiguous to the RF platform. We formulate a joint cross-platform multi-hypothesis tracking framework in which the dismount state vector consists of both kinematic parameters and micro-doppler features. We estimate these features from both RF data and EO-IR video and use them to enhance tracker performance.