A Boolean algebra approach to multiple sensor voting fusion

A technique for integrating multiple-sensor data using a voting fusion process that combines the individual sensor outputs is described. An important attribute of the method is the automatic confirmation of the target by the fusion processor without the need to explicitly determine which sensors and what level of sensor participation are involved. A three-sensor system, with multiple confidence levels in each sensor, is discussed to illustrate the approach. Boolean algebra is used to derive closed-form expressions for the multiple sensor-system detection probability and false-alarm probability. Procedures for relating confidence levels to detection and false alarm probabilities are described through an example. The hardware implementation for the sensor system fusion algorithm is discussed     

Smart Sensor Web: Web-based exploitation of sensor fusion forvisualization of the tactical battlefield

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     

Expert Systems in the Fighter of the 1990s

In the Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) to be deployed in the 1990s, the role of expert systems will enhance mission success. This paper discusses the utilization of two expert systems for handling multisensor data fusion and situation assessment. In multisensor data fusion, each sensor operates over a different region of the surveillance volume asynchronously and provides different measurements. In some instances, more than one sensor may yield the same measurement but with a different measurement accuracy. In this regard, the paper describes, in layman's terms, a system block diagram for processing the autonomous sensor track files and the possible need for a ``smart' fusion processor. This expert system is shown to manage the sensor outputs in both the temporal and spatial domains to maximize target identification confidence as well as kinematic state vector accuracy. The paper delineates the features needed by the fusion expert in order to assign a quality factor to each composite track file entry. A second expert system uses the output from fusion and other mission-related data to formulate the best picture of the surveillance volume at hand. This second expert system will show how historical data and real-time sensor data are merged for purposes of display parameters to the pilot, weapon cueing, countermeasures response management, and feedback to the fusion expert processor for individual sensor communication and data collection direction. The paper concludes with a tabular summary of the subprocesses of which these two expert systems may consist.     

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     

面向智能驾驶的高精度多源融合定位综述

随着信息时代各行各业效率的提升,传统的人工驾驶交通系统已逐渐无法满足人们对高效率、低风险交通服务的需求,而智能驾驶技术的出现为这一领域带来了机遇。如今,以自动驾驶为代表的智能驾驶已经成为一种实用的深度交叉技术,其核心模块包括高精度定位、场景感知、决策规划与控制等。定位模块作为智能驾驶系统中最基本、最核心的功能模块,需具备高精度、高可用、低时延的性能特点。当前,结合高精度卫星导航、惯性导航以及环境感知的多源融合技术已成为实现泛在智能驾驶所公认的核心手段,通过充分利用车载传感器的量测信息可以实现精确、可靠的定位服务。从导航定位中常用的传感器技术出发,对当前智能驾驶领域涉及的高精度定位技术进行了全面的回顾,给出了主流的基于滤波和因子图优化的多源融合框架,并对代表性算法进行了整理。最后,总结了现阶段智能驾驶中高精度定位技术的发展现状,并对未来的发展趋势进行了展望。     

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.     

An annunciator architecture for the year 2000

Exciting new safeguards and security technologies are on the horizon, and some are even on the shelves today. Self-testing sensors, smart sensors, and intelligent alarm analyzers are all designed to provide useful information to the operator. However, today's current annunciator systems were not designed to accommodate these new technologies. New display technologies are also changing the look and feel of the annunciator of the future. Annunciator technology needs to “catch up” to these other security technologies. This paper presents the concept for a new, object-oriented approach to annunciator architecture design. The new architecture could accommodate simple, switch-closure devices as well as information-rich sensors and intelligent analyzers. In addition the architecture could allow other leading-edge interfaces to be easily integrated into the annunciator system. These technologies will reduce operator workload and aid the operator in making informed security decisions     

基于Bayes-模糊逻辑算子的小子样可靠性信息融合方法

为了解决航空航天复杂系统可靠性评定中样本量小而导致评估结果可信度不高的问题,引入模糊逻辑算子这一非线性模型对多源可靠性验前信息进行融合,并给出了其参数估计的第二类极大似然(ML-Ⅱ)估计方法,通过仿真示例说明了融合方法的有效性.      

Fuzzy logic applications to multisensor-multitarget correlation

A consistent tactical picture requires data fusion technology to combine and propagate information received from diverse objects and usually vague situations. The information may be contained in two types of data; numerical data received from sensor measurements, and linguistic data obtained from human operators and domain experts. In real world situations, the numerical data may be noisy, inconsistent, and incomplete, and the linguistic information is imprecise and vague. To deal with these two types of data simultaneously, fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic provide a methodology to obtain an approximate but consistent tactical picture in a timely manner for very complex or ill-defined engineering problems. A functional paradigm for fuzzy data fusion is presented. It consists of four basic elements: (1) fuzzification of crisp elements, (2) fuzzy knowledge base derived from numerical input/output relations and humans, (3) fuzzy inference mechanism based on a class of fuzzy logic, (4) defuzzification of fuzzy outputs into crisp outputs for use by a plant. For real-time practical systems, the on-line determination of a fuzzy membership function from a given set of crisp inputs is vital. To this end, a methodology for estimating an optimal membership function from crisp input data has been implemented. This is based on the possibility/probability consistency principle as proposed by L.A. Zadeh. A relationship between the fuzzy membership function and the confidence level of statistical input data has been developed and it serves as a design parameter for fuzzification. This technique has been applied to a two-dimensional multisensor-multitarget tracking system. Fuzzy system performance evaluations have been presented. With simulated data in the laboratory environment, the simulation has been performed to evaluate the Mission Avionics Sensor Synergism (MASS) Systems. These results show better performance for the data correlation function using the fuzzy logic techniques.     

Intelli-FIELDTM: the next generation electrostatic fielddisturbance sensor

Outdoor perimeter volumetric field disturbance sensors must reliably detect perturbations to the field caused by an intruder, while rejecting noise and environmental changes that may be orders of magnitude greater than the target response. Currently, E-Field(R) systems are widely deployed in nuclear, correctional, and industrial sites to provide perimeter security. These systems are effective in rejecting the majority of noise and environmental stimuli through combined fixed attribute threshold comparison techniques. However, some environmental stimuli closely mimic target stimuli, so improved discrimination techniques have been sought. We describe the results of current studies and investigations of electrostatic sensor system response to targets and to various environmental changes. Fundamental principles in the character of sensor response to these varied stimuli are discussed. Techniques and methods that may be used to exploit the difference between intruder and environmental responses, while using cost-effective discrimination methods, are described. We show how the new Intelli-FIELD system was created, using currently available technologies, to provide both excellent detection properties, and an extremely low nuisance alarm rate, while, at the same time, greatly simplifying installation, calibration, and maintenance. The details of the new system hardware components and test results from initial field installations are described. A comparison of field performance with the previous E-Field product is provided to indicate the advantages of this new sensor technology     

Decentralized Filtering and Redundancy Management for Multisensor Navigation

Failure detection and redundancy management is discussed for avionics applications of integrated navigation involving coordinated use of multiple simultaneous sensor subsystems such as GPS, JTIDS, TACAN, VOR/DME, ILS, an inertial navigation system (INS), and possibly even Doppler AHRS. A brief high level survey is provided to assess the status of those techniques and methodologies advertized as already available for handling the challenging real-time failure detection, redundancy management, and Kalman filtering aspects of these systems with differing availabilities, differing reliabilities, differing accuracies, and differing information content/sampling rates. Following the status review, a new failure detection/redundancy management approach is developed based on voter/monitoring at both the raw data and at the filtered-data level, as well as using additional inputs from hardware built-in-testing (BIT) and from specialized tests for subsequent failure isolation in the case of ambiguous indications. The technique developed involves use of Gaussian confidence regions to reasonably account for the inherent differences in accuracy between the various sensor subsystems. Online estimates of covariances from the Kalman filter are to be used for this purpose (when available). A technique is provided for quantitatively evaluating both the probability of detecting failed component subsystems and the probability of false alarm to be incurred, which is then to be traded off as the basis for rational selection of the thresholds used in the automated decision process. Moreover, the redundancy management procedure is demonstrated to be amenable to pilot or navigation operator prompting and override, if necessary.     

Adaptive data fusion and sensor management for military applications

The military typically operates in demanding, dynamic, semi-structured and large-scale environments. This reality makes it difficult to detect, track, recognize/classify, and response to all entities within the volume of interest, thus increasing the risk of late (or non-) response to the ones that pose actual threat. A key challenge facing the military operators, in these contexts, is the focus of attention and effort, that is, how to make the most effective use of the available but scarce sensing and processing resources to gather the most relevant information from the environment and fuse it in the most efficient way. Adaptive Data Fusion and Sensor Management can aid this information gathering and fusion processes by automatically allocating, controlling, and coordinating the sensing and the processing resources to meet mission requirements. This paper presents results of a project initiated by Defence R&D Canada – Valcartier that aims at defining, developing, and demonstrating adaptive data fusion and sensor management concepts for distributed military surveillance operations.     

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     

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     

风洞无线智能传感器网络及无线测量技术研究

风洞试验现场,特别是大型连续式风洞试验现场的电磁环境非常恶劣,而风洞实验中的测量信号又是毫伏级的微弱信号,采用传统测量方式难以克服恶劣的电磁环境对测量系统的干扰。对于运动物体或无法布线的试验环境进行参数测量时,传统测量方式完全不起作用。针对上述问题,笔者对风洞无线智能传感器网络和无线测量技术进行了研究,采用ZIGBEE技术实现了风洞无线智能传感器网络和基于该网络的无线测量模块。极大地增强了测量系统的抗干扰能力,提高了风洞试验的精细化程度,降低了测量系统的经济成本。     

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。     

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.     

基于不确定传感器状态的机载系统多层故障诊断方法

准确的机载系统故障诊断是保证飞机安全飞行和实现经济效益最大化的重要途径。然而传感器受到内外部环境条件的影响而不可避免的存在检测状态的不确定性,因此基于单个传感器或局部区域传感器综合检测结果的方法难以完全保证故障诊断的有效性和正确性。针对飞机机载系统的结构和工作原理,充分利用系统中不同层级、不同区域传感器检测特征之间的关联关系,考虑单个传感器本身存在的不确定性,构建了传感器信息前向融合与反向校验相结合的分层诊断决策方法,实现了对系统状态和传感器状态的双重估计与更新,克服了单一传感器故障对系统诊断推理准确度的影响。该方法较传统故障诊断模型,不再依赖某一个或某一类传感器信息的绝对可靠,在实现系统级的准确故障诊断同时,还能判断具体某一传感器本身是否发生虚拟警。在飞机液压系统故障诊断案例中,新方法成功将系统故障诊断的虚警率降低了96%,传感器的不确定度降低了84%。     

Practical Fusion of Quantized Measurements via Particle Filtering

Most treatments of decentralized estimation rely on some form of track fusion, in which local track estimates and their associated covariances are communicated. This implies a great deal of communication; and it was recently proposed that by an intelligent quantization directly of measurements, the communication needs could be considerably cut. However, several issues were not discussed. The first of these is that estimation with quantized measurements requires an update with a non-Gaussian distribution, reflecting the uncertainty within the quantization "bin."; In general this would be a difficult task for dynamic estimation, but Markov-chain Monte-Carlo (MCMC, and specifically here particle filtering) techniques appear quite appropriate since the resulting system is, in essence, a nonlinear filter. The second issue is that in a realistic sensor network it is to be expected that measurements should arrive out-of-sequence. Again, a particle filter is appropriate, since the recent literature has reported particle filter modifications that accommodate nonlinear-filter updates based on new past measurements, with the need to refilter obviated. We show results that indicate a compander/particle-filter combination is a natural fit, and specifically that quite good performance is achievable with only 2-3 bits per dimension per observation. The third issue is that intelligent quantization requires that both sensor and fuser share an understanding of the quantization rule. In dynamic estimation this is a problem since both quantizer and fuser are working with only partial information; if measurements arrive out-of-sequence the problem is compounded. We therefore suggest architectures, and comment on their suitabilities for the task. A scheme based on delta-modulation appears to be promising.     

电机智能制造远程运维系统设计与试验平台研究

针对电机智能制造远程运维的需求,设计了基于云平台的电机智能制造远程运维系统。从远程运维系统的整体架构、信息架构及试验验证平台等方面进行了详细阐述。远程运维系统可以对电机制造过程和现场应用过程中的电机参数信息进行实时采集,实现电机全生命周期的运维管理。平台的应用有助于企业提高电机生产质量,减少了电机运维成本,加快了电机运维服务响应速度,提升了售后服务水平,提高了电机的智能制造水平。