Patent ID: 8836579

Claim:
A data processing system for merging detection information produced by a passive radar system with detection information coming from an external sensor, the passive radar system including a set of opportunistic transmitters and receivers forming a set of bistatic bases, each bistatic base being defined by a receiver and an opportunistic transmitter, the transmitter including a plurality of transmission channels to which correspond reception channels in the receiver, each bistatic base producing a bistatic plot, or RP bistatic plot, for each detection produced for a given channel, and transmitting these plots to the system, the RP bistatic plots transmitted being grouped as a function of the channel in which the corresponding detection was produced, the external sensor transmitting to the system temporally chained plots, forming external tracks or SE tracks, assigned an identifier, said processing system including at least: first SE tracking means for transforming each SE plot delivered by the external sensor into a set of bistatic plots synchronized to the measurement times of the passive radar RP, or SE bistatic plots, each SE bistatic plot being associated with a given bistatic base, and into an SE cartesian plot; merging means for merging, for each of the bistatic bases concerned, the RP bistatic plots produced for the various channels relating to that base and the SE bistatic plots associated with that base to form merged plots, a merged plot being assigned a set of attributes determined by the nature of the RP and/or SE bistatic plots merged to form the plot concerned; second tracking means for producing, for each bistatic base, RP, SE or RP+SE bistatic tracks by temporal chaining of RP merged plots with RP merged plots or of SE plots with SE plots or even by temporal chaining of RP merged plots with RP, merged plots and SE plots, a bistatic track being assigned a set of attributes determined by the nature of the latest merged plot to be associated with it; the merged plots used to form a bistatic track being assigned an attribute indicating that they have been used to this effect; cartesian third tracking means for associating the bistatic tracks produced separately for each of the bistatic bases and producing, for all bistatic bases formed on the basis of the same receiver, RP or RP+SE cartesian tracks and SE cartesian tracks, these cartesian tracks being produced on the basis of the RP, SE and RP+SE merged plots that contributed to the formation of the bistatic tracks produced by the second bistatic tracking means and the SE cartesian plots produced by the SE first tracking means, a cartesian track being assigned a set of attributes determined by the nature of the plots, RP and/or RP+SE merged plots and SE cartesian plots, that contribute to its formation and its maintenance.