PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF A 2/2 × m/n LOGIC FOR TRACK FORMATION IN CLUTTER USING A BI-BAND IMAGING SENSOR

Surveillance of targets from infrared (IR) satellite observations is a major concern for modern defense systems, especially for the detection and tracking of dim ballistic missiles. In such systems, track formation (or track initialization) is a crucial phase. The evaluation of the reliability of the track formation process (TFP) is important because of the disastrous effects the threat can have if it is not detected and a corresponding track not initiated (miss detection of a true target). Similarly, formation of false tracks when there is no target is also undesirable (false track initiation in the absence of a target). Thus, a tool for evaluating the true track detection and false track initiation characteristics of track initiation techniques is needed. The difficulty in developing such a tool comes from the limited resolution of the IR imaging sensor, possibility of miss detection of target-originated measurements, presence of false alarms due to environmental conditions (mainly due to cloud borders) and the uncertainty about target characteristics (number of targets, their dynamics, target types, etc.). Several approaches to developing such an analysis tool have been proposed in the literature [1],[3] for single-imaging (i.e., mono-band) sensors. Recent technological advances allow us to have several IR imaging sensors on the same satellite with different spectral bands in order to obtain better target detection. For such multi-band sensors no tools to evaluate the TFP exist. In this paper we develop a procedure for the evaluation of the performance of a track formation logic for bi-band sensors. The next section briefly describes the basics of the classic performance evaluation tool developed in [3]. Extension of this method to bi-band imaging sensors is then presented in the Section 3. Comparison of track initiation performances for mono-band and bi-band systems is also presented.