Ballistic track initialization from a bisatellite surveillance imaging system

This paper presents a new approach for ballistic target detection and tracking based on delocalized bisatellite surveillance system. The basic idea for track initialization is to use the advantage of stereovision provided by the two imaging IR sensors aboard surveillance geostationary satellites to improve the quality of true target track detection and to reduce the number of false track initializations. Two methods are presented in the paper. The first method is based on a pixel matching technique using the principle of stereovision. The second and simplest method is based on the matching of local 2D tracks initialized by a classical (2/2) (M/N) Markov-chain logic on each focal plane of imaging with a proper thresholding technique for track elimination based on physical constraints on 3D track. Some examples of bisatellite ballistic track initialization are given and the comparison of the two proposed solutions developed is discussed.