Classification Enhanced Target Tracking

"Anti-submarine warfare in shallow water is notoriously difficult, especially against low/no-doppler targets. Tracking is a useful means for differentiating a candidate contact from clutter tracks. However, weak target returns and high false alarm rates inthe littoral often result in large number of false tracks and operator saturation.Current tracker-classifiers such as the ETC operate in a sequential mode with tracking preceding classification. A feedback loop that passes contact classification information back to the tracker can prune the number of false alarms significantly.Furthermore, certain contact features (e.g., its orientation) can be incorporated into the tracker's state vector to improve tracking performance. These and other potentially viable architectures are obviously more effective if the system has sufficientspatial resolution to resolve contact features. We propose to use our high-fidelity target and environmental simulations to assess the feasibility of several classification-enhanced tracking architectures based on the high azimuthal resolution offered bysynthetic aperture processing. The enhanced tracking and classification techniques will find direct applications in any government and commercial activities that require active sonar, e.g., harbor surveillance and security, rapid coastal bathymetric mapping, location andcharacterization of environmental dumping in both U.S. and international waters, petrochemical