Practical Moving Target Detection in Maritime Environments Using Fuzzy Multi-sensor Data Fusion

As autonomous ships become the future trend for maritime transportation, it is of importance to develop intelligent autonomous navigation systems to ensure the navigation safety of ships. Among the three core components (sensing, planning and control modules) of the system, an accurate detection of target ships’ navigation information is critical. Within a typical maritime environment, the existence of sensor noises as well as the influences generated by varying environment conditions largely limit the reliability of using a single sensor for environment awareness. It is therefore vital to use multiple sensors together with a multi-sensor data fusion technology to improve the detection performance. In this paper, a fuzzy logic-based multi-sensor data fusion algorithm for moving target ships detection has been proposed and designed using both AIS and radar information. A two-stage fuzzy logic association method has been particularly developed and integrated with Kalman filtering to achieve a computationally efficient performance. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm has been tested and validated in simulations where multiple target ships are transiting with complex movements

Stacked Autoencoders for Outlier Detection in Over-the-Horizon Radar Signals

Detection of outliers in radar signals is a considerable challenge in maritime surveillance applications. High-Frequency Surface-Wave (HFSW) radars have attracted significant interest as potential tools for long-range target identification and outlier detection at over-the-horizon (OTH) distances. However, a number of disadvantages, such as their low spatial resolution and presence of clutter, have a negative impact on their accuracy. In this paper, we explore the applicability of deep learning techniques for detecting deviations from the norm in behavioral patterns of vessels (outliers) as they are tracked from an OTH radar. The proposed methodology exploits the nonlinear mapping capabilities of deep stacked autoencoders in combination with density-based clustering. A comparative experimental evaluation of the approach shows promising results in terms of the proposed methodology’s performance

Proceedings of the Fourth MIT/ONR Workshop on Distributed Information and Decision Systems Motivated by Command-Control-Communications (C3) Problems, June 15-June 26, 1981, San Diego, California

"OSP number 85552"--Cover.Library has v. 2 only.Includes bibliographies.Workshop suppported by the Office of Naval Research under contract ONR/N00014-77-C-0532edited by Michael Athans ... [et al.].v.1. Surveillance and target tracking--v.2. Systems architecture and evaluation--v.3. Communication, data bases & decision support--v.4. C3 theory

Maritime Moving Target Detection, Tracking and Geocoding Using Range-Compressed Airborne Radar Data

Eine regelmäßige und großflächige überwachung des Schiffsverkehrs gewinnt zunehmend an Bedeutung, vor allem auch um maritime Gefahrenlagen und illegale Aktivitäten rechtzeitig zu erkennen. Heutzutage werden dafür überwiegend das automatische Identifikationssystem (AIS) und stationäre Radarstationen an den Küsten eingesetzt. Luft- und weltraumgestützte Radarsensoren, die unabhängig vom Wetter und Tageslicht Daten liefern, können die vorgenannten Systeme sehr gut ergänzen. So können sie beispielsweise Schiffe detektieren, die nicht mit AIS-Transpondern ausgestattet sind oder die sich außerhalb der Reichweite der stationären AIS- und Radarstationen befinden. Luftgestützte Radarsensoren ermöglichen eine quasi-kontinuierliche Beobachtung von räumlich begrenzten Gebieten. Im Gegensatz dazu bieten weltraumgestützte Radare eine große räumliche Abdeckung, haben aber den Nachteil einer geringeren temporalen Abdeckung. In dieser Dissertation wird ein umfassendes Konzept für die Verarbeitung von Radardaten für die Schiffsverkehr-überwachung mit luftgestützten Radarsensoren vorgestellt. Die Hauptkomponenten dieses Konzepts sind die Detektion, das Tracking, die Geokodierung, die Bildgebung und die Fusion mit AIS-Daten. Im Rahmen der Dissertation wurden neuartige Algorithmen für die ersten drei Komponenten entwickelt. Die Algorithmen sind so aufgebaut, dass sie sich prinzipiell für zukünftige Echtzeitanwendungen eignen, die eine Verarbeitung an Bord der Radarplattform erfordern. Darüber hinaus eignen sich die Algorithmen auch für beliebige, nicht-lineare Flugpfade der Radarplattform. Sie sind auch robust gegenüber Lagewinkeländerungen, die während der Datenerfassung aufgrund von Luftturbulenzen jederzeit auftreten können. Die für die Untersuchungen verwendeten Daten sind ausschließlich entfernungskomprimierte Radardaten. Da das Signal-Rausch-Verhältnis von Flugzeugradar-Daten im Allgemeinen sehr hoch ist, benötigen die neuentwickelten Algorithmen keine vollständig fokussierten Radarbilder. Dies reduziert die Gesamtverarbeitungszeit erheblich und ebnet den Weg für zukünftige Echtzeitanwendungen. Der entwickelte neuartige Schiffsdetektor arbeitet direkt im Entfernungs-Doppler-Bereich mit sehr kurzen kohärenten Verarbeitungsintervallen (CPIs) der entfernungskomprimierten Radardaten. Aufgrund der sehr kurzen CPIs werden die detektierten Ziele im Dopplerbereich fokussiert abgebildet. Wenn sich die Schiffe zusätzlich mit einer bestimmten Radialgeschwindigkeit bewegen, werden ihre Signale aus dem Clutter-Bereich hinausgeschoben. Dies erhöht das Verhältnis von Signal- zu Clutter-Energie und verbessert somit die Detektierbarkeit. Die Genauigkeit der Detektion hängt stark von der Qualität der von der Meeresoberfläche rückgestreuten Radardaten ab, die für die Schätzung der Clutter-Statistik verwendet werden. Diese wird benötigt, um einen Detektions-Schwellenwert für eine konstante Fehlalarmrate (CFAR) abzuleiten und die Anzahl der Fehlalarme niedrig zu halten. Daher umfasst der vorgeschlagene Detektor auch eine neuartige Methode zur automatischen Extraktion von Trainingsdaten für die Statistikschätzung sowie geeignete Ozean-Clutter-Modelle. Da es sich bei Schiffen um ausgedehnte Ziele handelt, die in hochauflösenden Radardaten mehr als eine Auflösungszelle belegen, werden nach der Detektion mehrere von einem Ziel stammende Pixel zu einem physischen Objekten zusammengefasst, das dann in aufeinanderfolgenden CPIs mit Hilfe eines Bewegungsmodells und eines neuen Mehrzielverfolgungs-Algorithmus (Multi-Target Tracking) getrackt wird. Während des Trackings werden falsche Zielspuren und Geisterzielspuren automatisch erkannt und durch ein leistungsfähiges datenbankbasiertes Track-Management-System terminiert. Die Zielspuren im Entfernungs-Doppler-Bereich werden geokodiert bzw. auf den Boden projiziert, nachdem die Einfallswinkel (DOA) aller Track-Punkte geschätzt wurden. Es werden verschiedene Methoden zur Schätzung der DOA-Winkel für ausgedehnte Ziele vorgeschlagen und anhand von echten Radardaten, die Signale von echten Schiffen beinhalten, bewertet

System for surveillance of maritime traffic using the network of over-the-horizon radars

Ova disertacija se bavi optimizacijom i prilagođenjem algoritama za praćenje ciljeva za potrebe ublažavanja uticaja štetnih refleksija na proces praćenja ciljeva kod izahorizontskih radara sa površinskim talasom (HFSW radari), upotrebljenih za osmatranje pomorskih ciljeva i konceptualizacijom i realizacijom sistema za integrisano pomorsko praćenje ciljeva baziranog na HFSWR mrežama.This dissertation deals with the optimization and adaptation of target tracking algorithms to mitigate the impact of harmful reflections on the target tracking process in over-the-horizon high frequency surface wave radar (HFSW radar), used to observe maritime targets and conceptualize and implement an integrated maritime surveillance system based on HFSWR networks..

Abstracts on Radio Direction Finding (1899 - 1995)

The files on this record represent the various databases that originally composed the CD-ROM issue of "Abstracts on Radio Direction Finding" database, which is now part of the Dudley Knox Library's Abstracts and Selected Full Text Documents on Radio Direction Finding (1899 - 1995) Collection. (See Calhoun record https://calhoun.nps.edu/handle/10945/57364 for further information on this collection and the bibliography). Due to issues of technological obsolescence preventing current and future audiences from accessing the bibliography, DKL exported and converted into the three files on this record the various databases contained in the CD-ROM. The contents of these files are: 1) RDFA_CompleteBibliography_xls.zip [RDFA_CompleteBibliography.xls: Metadata for the complete bibliography, in Excel 97-2003 Workbook format; RDFA_Glossary.xls: Glossary of terms, in Excel 97-2003 Workbookformat; RDFA_Biographies.xls: Biographies of leading figures, in Excel 97-2003 Workbook format]; 2) RDFA_CompleteBibliography_csv.zip [RDFA_CompleteBibliography.TXT: Metadata for the complete bibliography, in CSV format; RDFA_Glossary.TXT: Glossary of terms, in CSV format; RDFA_Biographies.TXT: Biographies of leading figures, in CSV format]; 3) RDFA_CompleteBibliography.pdf: A human readable display of the bibliographic data, as a means of double-checking any possible deviations due to conversion

Radar Technology

In this book “Radar Technology”, the chapters are divided into four main topic areas: Topic area 1: “Radar Systems” consists of chapters which treat whole radar systems, environment and target functional chain. Topic area 2: “Radar Applications” shows various applications of radar systems, including meteorological radars, ground penetrating radars and glaciology. Topic area 3: “Radar Functional Chain and Signal Processing” describes several aspects of the radar signal processing. From parameter extraction, target detection over tracking and classification technologies. Topic area 4: “Radar Subsystems and Components” consists of design technology of radar subsystem components like antenna design or waveform design

Particle filter based target tracking from X-band nautical radar images

In this thesis, two particle filter (PF) based visual tracking approaches are designed for maneuvering target tracking from X-band nautical radar images: a PF-only based approach and a combined particle-Kalman filters (PF-KF) based approach. Unlike existing Kalman filter (KF) based target tracking algorithms used by nautical radar, these two proposed tracking methods both employ a kernel-based histogram model to represent the target in the radar image, and a Bhattacharyya coefficient based similar- ity distance between reference and candidate target models to provide the likelihood function for the particle filtering. However, the PF-KF method applies a sampling importance resampling (SIR) particle filter to obtain preliminary target positions, and then a Kalman filter to derive refined target positions and velocities. Moreover, several strategies are also proposed to improve the tracking accuracy and stability. These strategies include an enhanced reference target model construction method, updating reference target model, and adaptive KF for maneuver. Comparison of the target information obtained by the proposed PF-KF method from various field X-band nautical radar image sequences with those measured by GPS shows the pro- posed approach can provide a reliable and flexible online target tracking for nautical radar application. It is also shown that, in the scenario of strong sea clutter, the proposed approach outperforms the PF-only based approach and the classical track- ing approach which combines order-statistics (OS) CFAR processing and the Kalman filter

Environmentally adaptive noise estimation for active sonar

Noise is frequently encountered when processing data from the natural environment, and is of particular concern for remote-sensing applications where the accuracy of data gathered is limited by the noise present. Rather than merely accepting that sonar noise results in unavoidable error in active sonar systems, this research explores various methodologies to reduce the detrimental effect of noise. Our approach is to analyse the statistics of sonar noise in trial data, collected by a long-range active sonar system in a shallow water environment, and apply this knowledge to target detection. Our detectors are evaluated against imulated targets in simulated noise, simulated targets embedded in noise-only trial data, and trial data containing real targets. First, we demonstrate that the Weibull and K-distributions offer good models of sonar noise in a cluttered environment, and that the K-distribution achieves the greatest accuracy in the tail of the distribution. We demonstrate the limitations of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov goodness-of-fit test in the context of detection by thresholding, and investigate the upper-tail Anderson-Darling test for goodness-of-fit analysis. The upper-tail Anderson-Darling test is shown to be more suitable in the context of detection by thresholding, as it is sensitive to the far-right tail of the distribution, which is of particular interest for detection at low false alarm rates. We have also produced tables of critical values for K-distributed data evaluated by the upper-tail Anderson-Darling test. Having established suitable models for sonar noise, we develop a number of detection statistics. These are based on the box-car detector, and the generalized likelihood ratio test with a Rician target model. Our performance analysis shows that both types of detector benefit from the use of the noise model provided by the K-distribution. We also demonstrate that for weak signals, our GLRT detectors are able to achieve greater probability of detection than the box-car detectors. The GLRT detectors are also easily extended to use more than one sample in a single test, an approach that we show to increase probability of detection when processing simulated targets. A fundamental difficulty in estimating model parameters is the small sample size. Many of the pings in our trial data overlap, covering the same region of the sea. It is therefore possible to make use of samples from multiple pings of a region, increasing the sample size. For static targets, the GLRT detector is easily extended to multi-ping processing, but this is not as easy for moving targets. We derive a new method of combining noise estimates over multiple pings. This calculation can be applied to either static or moving targets, and is also shown to be useful for generating clutter maps. We then perform a brief performance analysis on trial data containing real targets, where we show that in order to perform well, the GLRT detector requires a more accurate model of the target than the Rician distribution is able to provide. Despite this, we show that both GLRT and box-car detectors, when using the K-distribution as a noise model, can achieve a small improvement in the probability of detection by combining estimates of the noise parameters over multiple pings.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Enhancing Sensor Performance with Statistical Data Analytics

This thesis examines the use of Automatic Identification System (AIS) information to generate a picture of maritime activity. It derives suitable methods to produce tracks of vessel movements, both in littoral and open-ocean scenarios, removing ambiguities and highlighting doppelg�anger. The thesis then goes on to describe techniques to improve our understanding of maritime activities through the extraction of individual vessel behaviours and the generation of models describing normal behaviours to highlight abnormalities