Fusion of GMTI Reports from Multiple Sensors in Clutter

Airborne systems for ground surveillance of mobile targets are increasingly providing significant tactical information for military operations. Fusion of ground moving target indicator (GMTI) radar data from multiple airborne platforms with overlappingfields of regard can improve tracking of moving ground targets. OSD is actively working to establish capabilities collaborative surveillance tasking and exploitation of airborne surveillance data. In many operational scenarios GMTI performance is limiteddue to excessive ground clutter, target motion and airborne platform surveillance geometry. Modern methods in multiple target tracking can be enhanced to provide improved fusion of GMTI radar data by exploiting known properties of airborne GMTI radars.Improved sensor models which can predict detection and measurement precision for specific classes of radars in various clutter levels are needed to enable improved tracking. This effort will produce software tools to enable enhanced fusion of GMTI radardata from multiple platforms.Airborne surveillance radar is rapidly finding commercial applications in traffic monitoring, land use survey, and transportation system monitoring. As GMTI radar becomes available for commercial exploitation tools will be indemand. Track fusion processing is a rapidly maturing military technology that holds potential for commercial applications in perimeter and site internal security, airport ground collision avoidance, transportation monitoring and survey and otherapplications. Improved tracking algorithms will enable the development of robust software tools that produce reliable information products from radar surveillance data in formats that can be directly interpreted by a wide range of users.