ARCHITECTURES FOR EFFICIENT DATA FUSION

摘要

This chapter has reviewed MSDF system architectures and algorithms. The centralised architecture, although it generates the optimal fused product, can pose such severe computational and communication bottlenecks in doing so that it is generally not practicable. Consequently, decentralised data fusion architectures are drawing considerable interest. A potential military application area is network-centric warfare. New ("Free Flight") air traffic management systems are an interesting area of potential civil application. Decentralised architectures can be either partially or fully decentralised. The simplest partially decentralised architectures are the hierarchical systems. Fully decentralised systems are subject to a number of additional operating constraints, but these make the systems more resilient, flexible, and scalable.