A testbed for the development, demonstration and testing of information fusion systems

The provision of ever more capable sensors, the trend towards single seat operation and the move to Network Centric Warfare (NCW) is likely to result in mental overload for the combat aircraft pilot if the management of information is not addressed. The potential benefits of increased information availability will thus not be realized. This paper describes the design and development of an information fusion testbed (IFT) that provides a real-time synthetic environment in which to address data fusion and information management issues with the aim of enhancing mission performance. The requirements for the IFT are defined, followed by an overview of the resulting architecture. Some results, from an initial emitter location trial, and possible future applications for the IFT are described. The IFT employs a re-configurable, end-to-end systems approach to representing the information architecture on board a combat aircraft, depending upon the military questions to be answered.