Environmentally Robust Likelihood Ratio Tracker

Under the IASW program Metron has developed a version of the Likelihood Ratio Tracker (LRT) for Distant Thunder and EER multistatic active systems which integrates contacts over time and space to reduce false alarms and increase detection probability. It appears that LRT is a promising method of addressing the false alarm problem, but efforts to use LRT have been hampered by our inability to obtain accurate predictions of sensor performance, particularly probability of detection as a function of target state. Using an inaccurate prediction of sensor performance in the likelihood functions employed by LRT can provide misleading results and degrade the performance of LRT. Metron proposes to extend the state space of LRT to include a random variable that represents the prediction error in mean signal excess so that we can incorporate performance prediction into LRT in a way that accounts for the uncertainties in the predictions. This will allow us to improve its detection and false alarm rejection capabilities for multistatic active systems such as EER, IEER, and Distant Thunder. In doing this Metron will be assisted by Signal Systems Incorporated (SSC) who will help to develop the detection models used in this extension of LRT.