Distributed Radar Detection

Summary

Multiradar surveillance systems are composed of several sensors located over a geographic area, and allow increased coverage area and reliability compared to a single sensor system. Other advantages are extended time coverage, resilience to fading, and graceful degradation. The joint use of multiple sensors for detection and tracking in air traffic control (ATC) and vessel traffic surveillance (VTS) applications is attracting an increasing research interest.

Decentralized or team decision making in such multisensor systems is of great interest since it allows decreased communication bandwidth in comparison with centralized processing, together with lower design complexity, lower computational power requirements and greater fault tolerance.

The most successful decentralized architecture for multisensor detection is the parallel fusion topology. Each radar detector takes a binary decision independently of the others about the presence or absence of the target in the resolution cell under test, and sends its partial result to a fusion center which takes the final decision. A management center controls the local detectors and the data fusion center, so as to maximize the global system detection performance. The achievable performance is significantly higher than a single sensor system thanks to the spatial diversity, especially in non-Gaussian environments.

Research topics:

Publications

1. F. Gini, F. Lombardini, L. Verrazzani, "Robust Monoparametric Multi-radar CFAR Detection against Non-Gaussian Spiky Clutter," IEE Proceedings Part. F (Radar, Sonar & Navigation), (to appear, 1997).
2. F. Gini, F. Lombardini, "Comments on "Optimal Multiple Level Decision Fusion with Distributed Sensors"," IEEE Transactions on Aerospace & Electronic Systems, (to appear, July 1997).
3. F. Gini, F. Lombardini, L. Verrazzani, "Decentralized CFAR Detection with Binary Integration in Weibull Clutter," IEEE Transactions on Aerospace & Electronic Systems, (to appear, April 1997).
4. F. Lombardini, "Dependent Randomization for Distributed Decision Fusion under Communication Constraints," Proceedings of the IEEE 1996 International Symposium on Information Theory and its Applications, Victoria, B.C., Canada, 17th-20th September 1996, pp.266-269.
5. F. Lombardini, L. Verrazzani, "Communication-Constrained Distributed Radar Detection in Spiky Clutter," Proceedings of the IEEE 1996 National Radar Conference, Ann Arbor, MI, U.S.A., 13th-16th May 1996, pp.285-290.
6. G. Corsini, F. Gini, M.V. Greco, L. Verrazzani, "Cramer-Rao Bounds and Estimation of the Parameters of the Gumbel Distribution," IEEE Transactions on Aerospace & Electronic Systems, vol.31, No.3, pp. 1202-1204, July 1995.
7. F. Gini, F. Lombardini, L. Verrazzani, "Decentralized CFAR Detection with Binary Integration in Weibull Clutter," IEEE Transactions on Aerospace & Electronic Systems, (to appear, April 1997).
8. F. Lombardini, F.Gini, L. Verrazzani, "CFAR Problems for Distributed Detection in Non Gaussian Clutter," Proceedings of the ICSPAT'95 6th International Conference on Signal Processing Applications and Technology, Boston, U.S.A., 24th-26th October1995, pp.1598-1602.
9. F. Gini, F. Lombardini, L. Verrazzani, "A Robust Approach to Decentralized CFAR Detection in Spiky Clutter," Proceedings of the EuMC'95 25th European Microwave Conference, Bologna, 4th-7th September 1995, pp.584-588.
10. F. Lombardini, F. Gini, L. Verrazzani, "A New Monoparametric CFAR Detector Robust Against Spiky Clutter," Proceedings of the 15th GRETSI Symposium on Signal and Image Processing, Juan-Les-Pins, France, September 1995.
11. E. Dalle Mese, F. Gini, M.V. Greco, F. Lombardini, L. Verrazzani, "Sensori Multipli e Fusione dei Dati," Alta Frequenza, Rivista di Elettronica (AEI), Vol. 6, n. 1, Jan.-Feb. 1994, pp. 9-23.
12. E. Dalle Mese, F. Gini, M.V. Greco, F. Lombardini, L. Verrazzani, "Decision Fusion in a High Resolution Multiradar Network," Proceedings of the NATO AC/243 Panel 3/4 Symposium on Multisensors and Sensor Data Fusion, Brussels, Belgium, 8th-11th November 1993, pp.14/1-14/12.
13. F. Gini, M.V. Greco, F. Lombardini, L. Verrazzani, "Distributed CFAR Detection in Weibull Clutter," Proceedings of the 14th GRETSI Symposium on Signal and Image Processing, Juan les Pins, France, 13th-16th September 1993, pp. 1171-1174.

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