Credible Set Estimation, Analysis, and Applications in Synthetic Aperture Radar Canonical Feature Extraction

Traditional estimation schemes such as Maximum A Posterior (MAP) or Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) determine the most likely parameter set associated with received signal data. However, traditional schemes do not retain entire posterior distribution, provide no confidence information associated with the final solution, and often rely on simple sampling methods which induce significant errors. Also, traditional schemes perform inadequately when applied to complex signals which often result in multi-modal parameter sets. Credible Set Estimation (CSE) provides a powerful and flexible alternative to traditional estimation schemes. CSE provides an estimation solution that accurately computes posterior distributions, retains confidence information, and provides a complete set of credible solutions. Determination of a credible region becomes especially important in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Automated Target Recognition (ATR) problems where signal complexity leads to multiple potential parameter sets. The presented research provides validation of methods for CSE, extension to high dimension/large observation sets, incorporation of Bayesian methods with previous work on SAR canonical feature extraction, and evaluation of the CSE algorithm. The results in this thesis show that: the CSE implementation of Gaussian-Quadrature techniques reduces computational error of the posterior distribution by up to twelve orders of magnitude, the presented formula for computation of the posterior distribution enables numerical evaluation for large observation sets (greater than 7,300 observations), and the algorithm is capable of producing M-th dimensional parameter estimates when applied to SAR canonical features. As such, CSE provides an ideal estimation scheme for radar, communications and other statistical problems where retaining the entire posterior distribution and associated confidence intervals is desirable

Vision-Aided Navigation for GPS-Denied Environments Using Landmark Feature Identification

In recent years, unmanned autonomous vehicles have been used in diverse applications because of their multifaceted capabilities. In most cases, the navigation systems for these vehicles are dependent on Global Positioning System (GPS) technology. Many applications of interest, however, entail operations in environments in which GPS is intermittent or completely denied. These applications include operations in complex urban or indoor environments as well as missions in adversarial environments where GPS might be denied using jamming technology. This thesis investigate the development of vision-aided navigation algorithms that utilize processed images from a monocular camera as an alternative to GPS. The vision-aided navigation approach explored in this thesis entails defining a set of inertial landmarks, the locations of which are known within the environment, and employing image processing algorithms to detect these landmarks in image frames collected from an onboard monocular camera. These vision-based landmark measurements effectively serve as surrogate GPS measurements that can be incorporated into a navigation filter. Several image processing algorithms were considered for landmark detection and this thesis focuses in particular on two approaches: the continuous adaptive mean shift (CAMSHIFT) algorithm and the adaptable compressive (ADCOM) tracking algorithm. These algorithms are discussed in detail and applied for the detection and tracking of landmarks in monocular camera images. Navigation filters are then designed that employ sensor fusion of accelerometer and rate gyro data from an inertial measurement unit (IMU) with vision-based measurements of the centroids of one or more landmarks in the scene. These filters are tested in simulated navigation scenarios subject to varying levels of sensor and measurement noise and varying number of landmarks. Finally, conclusions and recommendations are provided regarding the implementation of this vision-aided navigation approach for autonomous vehicle navigation systems