Multimode IR/RF Surrogate Seeker

A passive multimode IR and RF sensor fusion platform in a missile seeker guidance system would greatly benefit a missile’s capabilities in tracking and locking to a target. The strengths of RF and IR somewhat complement each other and the use of both can greatly increase the system’s ability to react to current countermeasures by independently selecting a disaffected sensor’s data to follow. The sensor fusion lends to increased accuracy in cluttered and/or low signal environments by giving two sources of data to parse which increases confidence in target acquisition and tracking. This proposal seeks to build a digital system to mix passive RF with the acquisition of such signals through commercially available software defined radio system that will feed into a pre-existing IR image processing core. The hardware capabilities will handle the real-time digitization and processing of both signals with edge computational abilities to make an intelligent system that can discern the detection and tracking of a target in a multimode passive IR/RF system.