A line-scan sensor as a near real-time surveillance sensor has features which make it particularly attractive for use in unmanned aircraft. The sensor output has a data content, permitting a combination of high resolution and wide field of view. For example, 4.000 picture points over a lateral field of view of up to 180 deg are readily achievable. The resultant signal bandwidth is low due to the absence of redundancy in the data. For a low speed unmanned aircraft, this may be as low as 300 kHz analogue bandwidth. With a wide field of view, the sensor does not require steering commands. This allows long periods of radio silence at the ground station which is an important factor to counter enemy ESM. Due to the single axis scan, the sensor is simpler, cheaper, more robust, and lighter than an equivalent steered framing thermal imager. The principle drawback to the use of a line-scan sensor is the absence of information on moving targets. There is also a strong incentive to further reduce sensor data bandwidth by automatic target discrimination in which target motion may play a part. The programme described has the objective of establishing and proving, in hardware and software, techniques for discriminating targets by their vectors using a special version of a line-scan sensor and real-time signal processing.
Signal processing for moving target detection from a line-scan sensor in unmanned aircraft
Signalverarbeitung zur Detektion bewegter Ziele mit einem Linienabtastsensor in unbemannten Flugzeugen
1988
4 Seiten, 1 Bild
Conference paper
English
Moving-target detection from a moving sensor
SPIE | 1992
|European Patent Office | 2021
|European Patent Office | 2018
|