TOYON RESEARCH CORPORATION — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: N192-054

Description

Toyon Research Corporation proposes the development of real-time software that analyzes radar returns to predict whether incoming data will be sufficient for target identification. Our solution sequentially analyzes new data as it is collected by an ISAR system in order to estimate the probability of correct target identification. This sequential estimation constantly refines its estimate as new data is available and is amenable to real-time processing. At a high level, our approach performs its analysis in two tiers. In the first stage, when little data has been collected, our approach provides an estimate of the magnitude of relative motion between the target and radar system. This motion is required for imaging and if the motion is low, the system will be able to terminate the collection very early. As more data is received, our approach forms an image using robust estimates of relative motion and performs analysis on these images to evaluate suitability for classification. When enough data has been collected for classification, or data quality is poor, the proposed algorithms will terminate data collection. We consider two different algorithms that will be implemented and evaluated in parallel.