ISR sensor processing and data exploitation

Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance, commonly abbreviated as ISR, refers to the system of sensors (data collection assets) and data analysis and dissemination resources used to provide information about strategic and tactical threats. The advances in ISR sensor technologies and the large amount of data generated from ISR systems are putting a significant demand on signal processing and data exploitation. For example, an electro-optical system can easily generate several billion bits per second while searching an area the size of a small city. Therefore, onboard front-end signal processing is needed to reduce the amount of information to a manageable size and to make the outputs compatible with existing and future communication links. Similarly, there is increasing interest in allowing data exploitation on board the platforms. This talk will address examples of front-end signal processing, demands in data exploitation, and associated high-performance embedded computing for ISR systems. The discussion will conclude with an emphasis on graph exploitation approaches to address the conversion of sensor information into knowledge that military forces and/or strategic analysts can act on in a timely manner.