Data mining of GMTI radar databases

An innovative data mining algorithm was developed by TSC for application to long-term, wide area ground moving target indication (GMTI) radar databases obtained from both airborne and space-based Intelligence, Reconnaissance and Surveillance (ISR) systems. The algorithm can discover high-value targets of opportunity including convoys in dense civilian background traffic, and was recently demonstrated for a GMTI database collected by an operational Air Force ISR platform. Further investigations are using a realistic computer simulation of vehicle traffic. In the algorithm, vehicle detection sequences are linked over multiple scans and then analyzed by Hough transform (HT) processing. The HT can resolve closely spaced vehicles and characterize target kinematics to provide real-time operator cueing or support GMTI radar forensic analysis. These data mining algorithms have been successfully applied to actual and simulated GMTI radar databases with a per scan probability of target detection as low as 50%, false alarm rates as high as one per km of road, and civilian vehicle densities up to 10 per km. Thus they can complement conventional tracking algorithms in areas of dense background traffic where false tracks and data-to-track misassociation is a serious problem.