Using optical imagery to enhance radar tracking performance

Abstract

A difficult problem with ground moving target indicator (GMTI) radar detection is how consistently to track targets moving through non-homogeneous regions of clutter such as forest and urban boundaries. Although attempts have been made to mitigate this detection problem using terrain mapping data, such data does not give current clutter information due to changes in vegetation, roads, buildings, and seasonal variations. We propose to use electro-optical imagery to enhance the detection performance of GMTI radar We use a multiresolution Markov model to represent both target and background clutter. This multiresolution structure allows us to match GMTI clutter accurately with the geographically registered electro-optical imagery for consistent moving target detection through clutter boundary areas.