Track-Before-Declare Methods in IR Image Sequences

摘要

The development of low observable (LO) targets, such as cruise missiles andcruise-missile-carrying aircraft, can severely stress the detection and tracking capabilities of infrared (IR) surveillance systems. Long-range surveillance requires the detection and tracking of targets that are spatially unresolved and often maneuvering in a low signal-to-clutter ratio (SCR) environment. These characteristics make the LO target difficult to detect in single-frame processing techniques. However, by combining intensity information from each pixel over many frames of data it is possible to improve target detection capability. A class of long-term integration techniques for weak target detection, known as track-before-declare (TBD), will be discussed in this paper.