Advanced Temporal Discrimination Techniques for Shipboard IRST

This Phase I SBIR proposal is aimed at developing and assessing the feasibility P of a new approach to track discrimination for shipboard IRST sensors. The proposed approach combines two complementary signal processing technologies; single scan discrimination and an innovative geometry-based technique that accomplishes the equivalent of track-before-detect (TBD) processing using significantly less computation than standard TBD approaches. Our geometry- based TBD process is based on a nonlinear energy maximization procedure that does not require parallel processing for multiple trajectory hypotheses. Atlantic developed the geometry-based TBD technique in the context of airborne passive missile warning. In this proposed effort, the procedure will be adapted to the problem of target tracking in shipboard IRST sensor data and the concept will be extended to allow the incorporation of multiple target We will assess the utility of both spatial and spectral measures. discriminants, including the set of comprehensive target measures developed by the Navy under the HISS Phase II program, for improved track discrimination performance. The expected gain from TBD methods based on energy integration is a function of the number of scans N over which the integration is performed, i.e. an SNR increase on the order of (N)112. This fundamental limit can be exceeded by the proposed geometry-based TED process if the track extraction is based not only on an energy maximization criteria, but also on additional measures that provide further clutter discrimination. in the. Phase II program, we will refine and optimize the developed track discrimination and perform extensive testing. This will be followed by the design, fabrication, testing and installation of a prototype real time processor in an IRST system.