Trajectory Estimation of Closely Spaced Objects (CSO) using Infrared Focal Plane Data of an STSS (Space Tracking and Surveillance System) Platform

摘要

A major challenge in tracking midcourse objects by means of an infrared (IR) sensor is that during a significant part of the trajectory they are closely spaced (Closely Spaced Objects, or CSO). The imprints of the CSOs on the IR focal plane create blurred unresolved clusters where the number, the coordinates, and the radiant intensities of the objects are not immediately apparent. This paper presents two methods for solving the problem of midcourse CSO resolution using IR focal plane data in the context of the Space Tracking and Surveillance System (STSS). Both approaches are based on dynamics/radiant intensity models of the focal plane objects, and use least squares-based minimization procedures. The first and more traditional baseline approach estimates the focal plane coordinates of the objects and their intensities on a frame-by-frame basis. The object tracks are then established by associating and fitting the estimates of all the frames to the postulated models. An alternative, multi-frame approach explored in this paper, uses the focal plane information from an entire sequence of frames, and, using least squares criteria over space and time and matched filtering, estimates the model parameters directly. With this "track-before-detect" approach, the association problem of objects to tracks is embedded in the estimation procedure.