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.