ENHANCED MARITIME TARGET HEADING ESTIMATION

For maritime vessel classification traditional tracking approaches provide the target’s course but not the target’s heading. The target’s course is the actual path of travel while the heading is the direction the bow of the vessel is pointing at any instant in time. Heading variations from course as indicated by the target track are most pronounced for slow target speeds in the presence of broadside surface winds and/or currents. The theoretical basis for determining vessel heading was completed in phase II however experimental validation and tuning was not performed. In addition, the robustness of the approach for small highly maneuverable vessels is not adequately understood. It is anticipated that the follow-on work will address tactical implementation considerations across the wide range of vessels, behaviors and environmental conditions. Ultimately the heading detector will be coupled with the maritime vessel classifier and the radar resource manager being developed as part of other funded efforts to improve classification performance.