Over-the-Horizon Radar Multipath and Multisensor Track Fusion Algorithm Development

Abstract

Over-the horizon radar (OTHR) and microwave radar networks can together generate track data over a wide surveillance region. However the data is often subject to ambiguity and uncertainty due to the complexities of the HF signal propagation environment, which give rise to multipath OTHR tracks, as well as ambiguities in target associations between multiple microwave radars. This report describes an association and fusion algorithm which deals with both sources of uncertainty. The algorithm is capable of fusing OTHR multipath tracks and non-OTHR tracks (e.g. microwave radar or GPS), as well as dealing with multipath tracks from OTHR networks. The algorithm achieves this through a very general, model based, approach which deals with multipath effects as well as asynchronicity between sources of data. Importantly, the approach incorporates track history in its computation of association probabilities and fused estimate calculations, thus exploiting temporal as well as instantaneous spatial relationships between tracks.