Patent ID: 6239740
Filing Date: 2001-05-29
Classification: G01S,Y10S

Abstract:
A method of correlating a plurality of objects comprising:scanning said plurality of objects;producing at a first time a set {.alpha.} of d dimensional data vectors, each of whose members a.epsilon.{.alpha.} corresponds to a corresponding one of said plurality of objects, each element of each of said members a corresponding to a physical property of said corresponding one of said plurality of objects at said first time;producing at a second time a second set {.beta.} of d dimensional data vectors, each of whose members b.epsilon.{.beta.} corresponds to one of said plurality of objects, each element of each of said members b corresponding to a physical property of said corresponding one of said plurality of objects at said second time;wherein the uncertainty if each element if each said data vector a or b is Gaussian and thus has respective covariance matrices A and B;selecting a numerical value .gamma..sub.AB ;determining which vector pairs a, b satisfy the gating criterion:.gamma..sub.A.gtoreq..gamma..sub.AB, and .gamma..sub.B.gtoreq..gamma..sub.AB, where.gamma..sub.A =(r-a).sup.T A.sup.-1 (r-a).gamma..sub.B =(r-b).sup.T B.sup.-1 (r-b).gamma..sub.AB =(a-b).sup.T (A+B).sup.-1 (a-b)where r is some d dimensional vector;selecting a relatedness criterion for determining the degree of association between any such vector pair a,b;for all said vector pairs which satisfy said gating criterion, applying said relatedness criterion;using the results of said applying of said relatedness criterion to fuse the data vectors of sets {.alpha.} and {.beta.} into a fused set {c} of data vectors each of whose members corresponds to one of said objects.