Networked microsensor research at ARL and the ASCTA

ARL in conjunction with the Advanced Sensors Collaborative Technology Alliance (ASCTA) has embarked on a research program to develop technology that enables distributed Unattended Ground Sensors (UGS) to form ad hock networks which will be inexpensive and will be able to operate for months at a time on a single battery. These networks will cooperatively process multi-modal sensor data to achieve multi-target Detection, Classification and Tracking (DCT) of vehicles and people. To best accomplish this goal, a modular, scalable, and robust decentralized fusion architecture capable of operating under constrained bandwidth conditions is being developed that will perform data, feature, and information level fusion across all levels of the system hierarchy. Algorithms will be developed to autonomously allocate resources to optimize system performance; these will include self-calibration and localization, target handoff sensor cueing, power management, and overall improvement in performance of DCT. This will allow for rapid deployment of UGS fields that provide information about large unoccupied areas. Finally, system modeling and simulation will help optimize overall network performance, cost, operating life and bandwidth usage. This will identify new required sensor modalities and areas where sensor improvements are necessary. Furthermore in those areas where significant processing load is anticipated, tools will be developed to exploit power/energy techniques for efficiently implementing complex algorithms. Progress will be reported in all of these areas and new research opportunities will be identified.