title: Detection of moving point objects against a moving background.
abstract: The temporal spectral characteristics of a dim moving point object and a moving background, as observed by a sensor array, are analyzed. This type of problem occurs in remote sensing, machine vision, and many other applications. The diffraction limitation of the sensor optics ensures that the temporal spectrum of the background moving with a finite velocity has a finite maximum bandwidth, regardless of background structure. Because the outputs of the sensor array are time sampled, its spectrum is infinitely replicated over an interval of temporal frequency equal to the reciprocal of the sampling time. If this interval is at least twice as large as the maximum background temporal frequency, there is a region with no background components in the middle of each interval. However, because the point object temporal spectrum in the sampled sensor array output is continuously distributed, this region will contain part of the point object signal. Thus, a criterion for the existence of an effective background suppression filter is that the point object fundamental frequency must be greater than the maximum background temporal frequency. When this criterion is satisfied, the amount of background leakage in the filter depends on the sharpness of its passband response and its stopband characteristics. In general, higher-order filters have sharper response and hence better performance. If the criterion is not met, all types of filter lose their effectiveness since the background signal will leak through the passband of the filter. The fundamental concepts developed here were examined for some typical parameter values. It is shown that for this system the point object can be effectively discriminated. In some cases the point object and background temporal spectral responses vary significantly with spatial position within the field of view. Because the filter's center frequency must match the point object temporal fundamental frequency, it is necessary to use an adaptive filter in these situations.
authors.affiliation: Aerospace Corporation, P.O. Box 92957, Los Angeles, California 90009, USA.
authors.forename: J A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Saghri
authors.forename: A A
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Sawchuk