Association of Over-The-Horizon radar tracks with tracks from microwave radar and other sources

摘要

The Jindalee Operational Radar Network (JORN) consists of a network of overlapping skywave Over Tne-Horizon radars (OTHR) which will provide surveillance of the air space and ocean off the northern coast of Australia. An OTHR can yield multiple tracks from a single target as a result of the complex structure of the ionosphere which varies spatially and temporally. Overlapping OTHRs, microwave radars and other seniors can simultaneously form tracks on the same targets. Consequently there is a heavy burden on operators to associate and combine those tracks which are derived from the same target.nThe broad objective of this work is to perform the fusion of OTHR tracks with tracks from other sources such as microwave radars and targets reporting Global Positioning System (GPS) data.nAn efficient algorithm has been developed which can incorporate advice about the propagation paths through the ionosphere and produce a list of associations of OTHR tracks and non-OTHR tracks. This algorithm is a generalisation of a previously developed algorithm for associating tracks from multiple OTHRs. IT can operate in real-time and allows for the possibility of refining the ionospheric advice system based on ground registered tracks.