Data Fusion paper, 2002

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Title:

Distributed air-to-ground targeting

Abstract:

This paper examines the requirement for accurate estimates of the statistical correlations between measurements in a distributed air-to-ground targeting system. The study uses results from a distributed multi-platform targeting simulation based on a level-1 data fusion system to assess the extent to which correlated measurements can degrade system performance, and the degree to which these effects need to be included to obtain a required level of accuracy. The data fusion environment described in the paper incorporates a range of target tracking and data association algorithms, including several variants of the standard Kalman filter, probabilistic association techniques and Reid's multiple hypothesis tracker. A variety of decentralised architectures are supported, allowing comparison with the performance of equivalent centralised systems. In the analysis, consideration is given to constraints on the computational complexities of the fusion system, and the availability of estimates of the measurement correlations and platform-dependent biases. Particular emphasis is placed on the localisation accuracy achieved by different algorithmic approaches and the robustness of the system to errors in the estimated covariance matrices.

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Authors:

J. F. Ralph, The University of Liverpool, UK;
M. I. Smith, Waterfall Solutions, UK;
M. Bernhardt, QinetiQ, UK;
C. E. West, QinetiQ, UK;
C. R. Angell, QinetiQ, UK;
S. W. Sims, The University of Liverpool, UK.

Conferences:

Aerosense 2002, Orlando FL, April 1 - April 5
Sensor Fusion: Architectures, Algorithms and Applications VI conference,
Thursday 4th April, Session 6, 3.30pm