Sensor fusion for ISR assets
Thyagaraju Damarla · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2010
Multiple sensors with multiple modalities are being routinely deployed in forward areas to gain the situational awareness. Some of the sensors are activity detection sensors such as acoustic, seismic, passive infrared (PIR), and magnetic sensors which normally consume low power. These sensors often cue or wake up more power hungry sensors such as imaging sensors, namely visible camera and infrared camera, and radar to either capture a picture or to track a target of interest. Several airborne sensors routinely gather information on an area of interest using radar, imaging sensors for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) purposes. Recently, Empire Challenge has brought a new concept: that is, harvesting the ISR data from the remotely distributed unattended ground sensors. Here aerial vehicle flies by the area occasionally and queries if the sensors have any data to be harvested. Harvesting large amounts of data is unnecessary and impractical - so some amount of fusion of the sensor data is essential.