Data Fusion Architecture for Maritime Surveillance

Various multisensor data fusion architectures have been utilized to support the Maritime Surveillance (MS) in maritime tactical and strategic operations. The military tactical situation is mechanized through data fusion thus improving the quality of target tracking system. One of the major problems is that the surveillance area is generally large, hence making it difficult to arrive at a feasible data fusion architecture. The latter arises due to timing, accuracy, and different types of sensors and sensor platforms. In this paper, various data fusion architectures for MS are discussed. The proposed system interacts with the data fusion processes at different information levels. This architecture is employed to support the MS for a typical maritime tactical scenario. The proposed architecture has an acceptable performance.