Decision fusion strategies for target detection with a three-sensor suite
Belur V. Dasarathy · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 1997
Boolean logic based decision fusion strategies for target detection with two sensors have been studied in detail in the literature over the years. Increasing the number of sensors to three, offers an added dimension of flexibility in the design of fusion strategies. One could visualize a single stage fusion wherein the decision outputs of all the three sensor subsystems are fused simultaneously under a variety of strategies such as AND logic, or majority (simple or firm decisions only) logic, or a no-firm contradiction logic. Alternatively, one could explore a two-stage fusion strategy, wherein either an AND or an OR logic is used at the first stage combining the decisions of two of the sensor subsystems, followed by a similar logic choice combining the fused decision from the first level with the decision from the third sensor subsystem. Of these strategies, while some may turn out to be equivalent in a mathematical sense, others remain clearly unique. The study analyzes these strategies to assess their relative benefits. The paper concludes with a brief discussion on possible extensions in terms of temporal fusion strategies that exploit information derived from multiple looks and the potential for application to real-world problems such as mine detection.