ARETE ASSOCIATES — Department of Defense SBIR Phase II: A17-102

Description

In this work, Areté Associates proposes to extend its long history of tracking and detection solutions to meet the challenge of tracking small and dim targets in high-clutter environments using a mid-wave infrared (MWIR) sensor coupled with innovative detection algorithms and processing. We present a track-before-detect, signal-integration approach that merges the functionality of Areté’s proven dim-target detection and tracking algorithms with SNR-increasing pre-processing, background-subtraction and whitening routines. In Phase I, we adapted and tested our algorithms using a suite of Areté-owned equipment and Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)-implementation. Pre-processing methods increased Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) by 10-25 dB for all scenarios, while greatly reducing Signal-to-Clutter Ratio (SCR) for foliage/grass and cloud-edge clutter. Speed tests on a GPU-implemented version of the algorithms showed that a full processing chain is feasible at required frame rates. In Phase II, we will develop and test a breadboard demonstration system with new image stabilization and additional clutter rejection algorithms.