title: Target detection and recognition improvements by use of spatiotemporal fusion.
abstract: We developed spatiotemporal fusion techniques for improving target detection and automatic target recognition. We also investigated real IR (infrared) sensor clutter noise. The sensor noise was collected by an IR (256 x 256) sensor looking at various scenes (trees, grass, roads, buildings, etc.). More than 95% of the sensor pixels showed near-stationary sensor clutter noise that was uncorrelated between pixels as well as across time frames. However, in a few pixels (covering the grass near the road) the sensor noise showed nonstationary properties (with increasing or decreasing mean across time frames). The natural noise extracted from the IR sensor, as well as the computer-generated noise with Gaussian and Rayleigh distributions, was used to test and compare different spatiotemporal fusion strategies. Finally, we proposed two advanced detection schemes: the double-thresholding the reverse-thresholding techniques. These techniques may be applied to complicated clutter situations (e.g., very-high clutter or nonstationary clutter situations) where the traditional constant-false-alarm-ratio technique may fail.
authors.affiliation: Lockheed Martin, Missiles and Fire Control-Orlando, 5600 Sand Lake Road, MP-916, Orlando, Florida 32819, USA. hai-wen.chen@lmco.com
authors.forename: Hai-Wen
authors.initials: HW
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Surachai
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sutha
authors.forename: Teresa
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Olson