Radar Image Processing and AIS Target Fusion

Collision avoidance is one of the high-level safety objectives and requires a complete and reliable description of maritime traffic situation. A combined use of data provided by independent data sources is an approach to improve the accuracy and integrity of traffic situation related information. In this paper we study the usage of radar images for automatic identification system (AIS) and radar fusion. Therefore we simulate synthetic radar images and evaluate the tracking performance of the particle filter algorithm as the most promising filter approach. During the filter process the algorithm estimates the target position and velocity which we finally compare with the known position of the simulation. This approach allows the performance analysis of the particle filter for vessel tracking on radar images. In a second extended simulation we add the respective AIS information of the target vessel and study the gained level of improvement for the particle filter approach. The work of this paper is integrated in the research and development activities of DLR Institute of Communications and Navigation dealing with the introduction of data and system integrity into the maritime traffic system. One of the aimed objectives is the automatic assessment of the traffic situation aboard a vessel including integrity information.