Smart sensor Web: tactical battlefield visualization using sensor fusion

Smart sensor Web (SSW) is a recent DUSD (S&T) initiative inspired by extraordinary technological advances in sensors and microelectronics and by the emergence of the Internet as a real-time communication tool. The overall vision for SSW is an intelligent, Web-centric distribution and fusion of sensor information that provides greatly enhanced situational awareness, on demand, to warfighters at lower echelons. Emphasis is on multi-sensor fusion of large arrays of local sensors, joined with other assets, to provide real-time imagery, weather, targeting information, mission planning, and simulations for military operations on land, sea, and air. This paper gives an overview of this new initiative, highlights some of the technology challenges in sensor/information fusion, and presents a program approach for near-term demonstrations and long-term solutions, involving the DoD, National Labs, commercial industry, and academia.     

Optimal Decision Fusion in Multiple Sensor Systems

The problem of optimal data fusion in the sense of the Neyman-pearson (N-P) test in a centralized fusion center is considered. The fusion center receives data from various distributed sensors. Each sensor implements a N-P test individually and independently of the other sensors. Due to limitations in channel capacity, the sensors transmit their decision instead of raw data. In addition to their decisions, the sensors may transmit one or more bits of quality information. The optimal, in the N-P sense, decision scheme at the fusion center is derived and it is seen that an improvement in the performance of the system beyond that of the most reliable sensor is feasible, even without quality information, for a system of three or more sensors. If quality information bits are also available at the fusion center, the performance of the distributed decision scheme is comparable to that of the centralized N-P test. Several examples are provided and an algorithm for adjusting the threshold level at the fusion center is provided.     

基于改进D-S证据理论的航空发动机转子故障决策融合诊断研究

针对单一传感器的测量信息难以准确、全面地反映航空发动机转子、轴承和齿轮的工作状况,进而造成振动故障诊断难度大的问题,提出安装多个振动传感器组成传感器网络,建立基于多传感器信息的发动机转子故障决策融合诊断系统。由于多传感器系统不可避免地会存在各传感器信息不一致、信息冲突的情形,因此针对该融合诊断系统的信号测量、信息预处理、特征提取、故障诊断及决策融合5个环节,重点研究了决策融合环节的Dempster-Shafer（D-S）证据决策融合方法存在的冲突证据融合失效问题。通过分析原因,从避免“一票否决”现象和证据加权平均两个方面进行改进,提出了改进D-S证据融合方法,并应用于航空发动机转子的模拟故障决策融合诊断中。结果表明基于D-S证据理论对3个传感器的单一诊断结果进行决策融合,能得到比任一单个传感器更准确、可靠的结果;而改进D-S证据融合方法由于能在一定程度上克服冲突证据融合带来的失效问题,且能同时兼顾处理好非冲突证据的融合,故其对于证据冲突和非冲突情形都取得了较好的融合效果,因此总的分类正确率要高于常规D-S算法和PCR5算法。     

一种分布式异步航迹融合算法

在多被动传感器目标跟踪中,融合中心处理的信息一般是同步的,然而实际情况并非如此。另外,一些被动传感器只能得到目标的方位信息,无法单独形成有效航迹,这就需要将各传感器数据同步到相同时刻,然后应用同步融合算法。针对被动传感器探测系统,采用传感器到传感器融合和系统到传感器融合的分布式融合结构,并对各局部传感器引入全局反馈,对相关信息采用协方差交叉算法进行处理,完成被动传感器异步数据的融合,仿真结果表明,该算法具有较好的融合效果。     

Sensor fusion for intelligent alarm analysis

The purpose of an intelligent alarm analysis system is to provide complete and manageable information to a central alarm station operator by applying alarm processing and fusion techniques to sensor information. This paper discusses the sensor fusion approach taken to perform intelligent alarm analysis for the Advanced Exterior Sensor (AES). The AES is an intrusion detection and assessment system designed for wide-area coverage, quick deployment, low false/nuisance alarm operation, and immediate visual assessment. It combines three sensor technologies (visible, infrared, and millimeter wave radar) collocated on a compact and portable remote sensor module. The remote sensor module rotates at a rate of 1 revolution per second to detect and track motion and provide assessment in a continuous 360° field-of-regard. Sensor fusion techniques are used to correlate and integrate the track data from these three sensors into a single track for operator observation. Additional inputs to the fusion process include environmental data, knowledge of sensor performance under certain weather conditions, sensor priority, and recent operator feedback. A confidence value is assigned to the track as a result of the fusion process. This helps to reduce nuisance alarms and to increase operator confidence in the system while reducing the workload of the operator     

A multi-rate sensor fusion approach using information filters for estimating aero-engine performance degradation

Gas-path performance estimation plays an important role in aero-engine health management, and Kalman Filter(KF) is a well-known technique to estimate performance degradation. In previous studies, it is assumed that different kinds of sensors are with the same sampling rate, and they are used for state estimation by the KF simultaneously. However, it is hard to achieve state estimation using various kinds of sensor measurements at the same sampling rate due to a complex network and physical characteristic differences between sensors, especially in an advanced multisensor architecture. For this purpose, a multi-rate sensor fusion using the information filtering approach is proposed based on the square-root cubature rule, which is called Multi-rate Squareroot Cubature Information Filter(MSCIF) to track engine performance degradation. Soft measurement synchronization of the MSCIF is designed to provide a sensor fusion condition for multiple sampling rates of measurement, and a fault sensor is isolated by maximum likelihood validation before state estimation. The contribution of this paper is to supply a novel multi-rate informationfilter approach for sensor fault tolerant health estimation of an aero-engine in a multi-sensor system. Tests are conducted for aero-engine performance degradation estimation with multiple sampling rates of sensor measurement on both digital simulation and semi-physical experiment.Experimental results illustrate the superiority of the proposed algorithm in terms of degradation estimation accuracy and robustness to sensor failure in a multi-sensor system.     

Explicit solutions for some simple decentralized detection problems

A decentralized detection problem is considered in which a number of identical sensors transmit a finite-valued function of their observations to a fusion center which makes a final decision on one of M alternative hypotheses. The authors consider the case in which the number of sensors is large, and they derive (asymptotically) optimal rules for determining the messages of the sensors when the observations are generated from a simple and symmetrical set of discrete distributions. They also consider the tradeoff between the number of sensors and the communication rate of each sensor when there is a constraint on the total communication rate from the sensors to the fusion center. The results suggest that it is preferable to have several independent sensors transmitting low-rate (coarse) information instead of a few sensors transmitting high-rate (very detailed) information. They also suggest that an M-ary hypothesis testing problem can be viewed as a collection of M(M-1)/2 binary hypothesis testing problems. From this point of view the most useful messages (decision rules) are those that provide information to the fusion center that is relevant to the largest possible numbers of these binary hypothesis testing problems     

弹载大视场星惯组合深度融合导航技术

为了降低弹载星惯组合（Stellar-INS）飞行中段对调姿观星的要求，提高星惯组合姿态精度，提出了大视场（LFOV）星惯组合深度融合导航方法。小视场（NFOV）星敏感器输出星矢量为主，大视场星敏感器可同时输出姿态和星矢量信息，分别推导了基于星敏感器输出姿态和星矢量信息的观测方程，分析了星矢量和姿态观测方法之间的关联性。建立了包含星惯安装误差、陀螺误差以及初始平台误差角的星惯组合全误差项模型，基于线性卡尔曼滤波给出了深度融合导航方法。开展了数学仿真验证，分析了不同调姿观星路径约束下，大/小视场星惯组合性能差异。结果表明，大视场星惯组合深度融合导航方法不仅可以降低调姿观星约束要求，还可以实现组合姿态性能提升。     

The modeling and estimation of asynchronous multirate multisensor dynamic systems

An asynchronous data fusion problem based on a kind of multirate multisensor dynamic system is studied. The system is observed by multirate sensors independently, with the state model known at the finest scale. Under the assumption that the sampling rates of sensors decrease successively by any positive integers, the discrete dynamic system models are established based on each single sensor and an asynchronous multirate multisensor state fusion estimation algorithm is presented. Theoretically, the estimate is proven to be unbiased and the optimal in the sense of linear minimum covariance, the fused estimate is better than the Kalman filtering results based on each single sensor, and the accuracy of the fused estimate will decrease if any of the sensors' information is neglected. The feasibility and effectiveness of the algorithm are shown through simulations.     

一种基于相邻模块化加权D-S的融合诊断方法

常规D-S (Dempster-Shafter)决策融合方法由于其自身理论不足,不能很好直接处理决策结果偏差大、冲突大的传感器融合问题,因而对于信息高冲突情况下的转子微弱故障融合诊断存在着失效问题。针对该类问题与不足,借鉴复杂网络的舆论传播、社会学习理论及多智能体一致性决策的相关概念与思路,从避免决策结果冲突大的传感器直接进行融合的角度进行改进,提出相邻模块化加权D-S融合方法。该方法首先根据初步结果进行相邻节点与模块划分,只有决策距离在相邻界限值范围内的相邻模块节点才能进行决策融合;对于同一模块内相邻节点,根据各节点决策权重及初步决策结果采用加权D-S融合方法进行决策融合;针对融合结果再进行相邻节点模块划分与融合,依此步骤进行循环划分与融合,直到所有模块与节点均不相邻;最后采用专家权威决策方法确定权重和最大的模块融合结果作为最终的传感器网络一致性决策结果。通过多传感器网络的转子故障模拟实验对所提方法进行验证,应用结果表明:所提方法可以较好解决少数传感器诊断正确、而多数诊断错误的信息高冲突条件下的局部微弱故障融合诊断问题。     

Tracking with distributed sets of proximity sensors using geometric invariants

We propose a new approach to forming an estimate of a target track in a distributed sensor system using very limited sensor information. This approach uses a central fusion system that collects only the peak energy information from each sensor and assumes that the energy attenuates as a power law in range from the source. A geometrical invariance property of the proximity of the distributed sensors relative to a target track is used to generate potential target track paths. Numerical simulation examples are presented to illustrate the practicality of the technique.     

Architectures and algorithms for track association and fusion

Target tracking using multiple sensors can provide better performance than using a single sensor. One approach to multiple target tracking with multiple sensors is to first perform single sensor tracking and then fuse the tracks from the different sensors. Two processing architectures for track fusion are presented: sensor to sensor track fusion, and sensor to system track fusion. Technical issues related to the statistical correlation between track estimation errors are discussed. Approaches for associating the tracks and combining the track state estimates of associated tracks that account for this correlation are described and compared by both theoretical analysis and Monte Carlo simulations     

Optimal distributed decision fusion

The problem of decision fusion in distributed sensor systems is considered. Distributed sensors pass their decisions about the same hypothesis to a fusion center that combines them into a final decision. Assuming that the sensor decisions are independent of each other for each hypothesis, the authors provide a general proof that the optimal decision scheme that maximizes the probability of detection at the fusion for fixed false alarm probability consists of a Neyman-Pearson test (or a randomized N-P test) at the fusion and likelihood-ratio tests at the sensors     

The Effect of the Common Process Noise on the Two-Sensor Fused-Track Covariance

This note deals with the effect of the common process noise on the fusion (combination) of the state estimates of a target based on measurements obtained by two different sensors. This problem arises in a multisensor environment where each sensor has its information processing (tracking) subsystem. In the case of an ?-? tracking filter the effect of the process noise is that, over a wide range of its variance, the uncertainty area corresponding to the fused estimates is about 70 percent of the single-sensor uncertainty area as opposed to 50 percent obtained if the dependence is ignored.     

Remote data sensing using SAR and harmonic reradiators

In sensor networks distributed over large areas, communication by means of active transmitters on sensor nodes is inherently energy expensive and poses a significant bottleneck to achieve a long battery life. We propose modulated reradiation of radar illumination as a means to transmit information from a group of sensors to an airborne radar. This puts the communications energy burden on the radar transmitter rather than on the sensor nodes, thus increasing their battery lifetimes. To distinguish the sensor return from the clutter return, the modulation on the sensors is done by switching a nonlinear load on the sensor antenna and processing the harmonic reradiation. We present techniques to transmit information from the sensors, which use stripmap mode synthetic aperture radar (SAR) ideas to decode the information and to simultaneously obtain a geographic map of the sensor locations.     

雷达和红外成像双传感器信息融合目标识别研究

提出了一种利用目标的雷达和红外成像２种独立的传感器信息的互补性来构造特征向量的信息融合方法——联合向量空间法,并用对应的自适应信息融合系统进行目标识别。仿真证实比用单传感器的效果明显优越,从而说明了本文方法的有效性。     

城市建筑室内外无缝应急救援定位技术

应急救援定位技术的发展关系到救援人员和受害人员的生命安全。首先，对应急定位与普适定位进行了对比，总结了应急定位的主要特征，阐述了应急定位系统的精度、连续性等技术指标。之后，分析了不同传感器在应急场景下的可用性，对相应传感器在应急定位领域中的融合和应用进行了综述。最后，围绕坐标基准、知识图谱、多源协同、智能控制四项关键技术架构室内外无缝应急救援定位系统，总结了构建流程。其中，坐标基准将室内和室外、相对定位和绝对定位统一，而知识图谱综合权威发布信息和灾害场景信息进行决策，不仅可以辅助多源融合中传感器的选择、传感器无缝切换以及故障传感器隔离，还能协调智能控制中救援设备的调度、救援设备之间和救援设备与人员之间的协同定位。     

Performance evaluation of track fusion with information matrixfilter

In a multisensor environment, each sensor detects multiple targets and creates corresponding tracks. Fusion of tracks from these, possibly dissimilar, sensors yields more accurate kinematic and attribute information regarding the target. Two methodologies have been employed for such purpose, which are: measurement fusion and state vector fusion. It is well known that the measurement fusion approach is optimal but computationally inefficient and the state vector fusion algorithms are more efficient but suboptimal, in general. This is so because the state vector estimates to be fused obtained from two sensors, are not conditionally independent in general due to the common process noise from the target being tracked. It is to be noted that there are three approaches to state vector fusion, which are: weighted covariance, information matrix, and pseudomeasurement. This research is restricted solely to performance evaluation of the information matrix form of state vector fusion. Closed-form analytical solution of steady state fused covariance has been derived as a measure of performance using this approach. Note that the results are derived under the assumptions that the two sensors are synchronized and no misassociation or merged measurement is considered in the study. Results are compared with those using Monte Carlo simulation, which was used in the past to predict fusion system performance by various authors. These results provide additional insight into the mechanism of track fusion and greatly simplify evaluation of fusion performance. In addition, availability of such a solution facilitates the trade-off studies for designing fusion systems under various operating conditions     

刀具磨损估计的多传感器融合神经网络方法研究

研究了利用声发射、振动和电机功率信号经BP算法信息融合估计刀具磨损量的方法,采用简单有效的灰色模型关联分析法选择特征参数,研究了网络参数对性能的影响以及网络性能的稳定性。     

某型机载惯性/卫星/大气多信息融合MEMS航姿系统的设计与实现

针对机载MEMS航姿系统中器件精度低且易受干扰导致其姿态性能降低的问题,提出了一种基于大气/卫星信息辅助的航姿系统融合方案。构建了多源传感信息辅助下的综合航姿系统方案,所设计系统具有多种工作运行模式,可根据传感器可用状态实现滤波器的无缝切换,建立了组合导航系统状态和量测模型,采用Kalman滤波方法实现多源信息的融合与估计,并开展了原理样机的跑车试验。试验结果表明,所设计的融合方案能有效保障航姿系统的可靠性与精度,具有较高的工程应用价值。