Abstract
Wide-area space surveillance sensors are the backbone to cataloging of Earth orbiting objects. Their core capability should be to efficiently detect as many space objects as possible over a large space domain. As such, the question of how to quantitively evaluate the object detection performance of the sensors is critical. The evaluation is traditionally performed by means of infield static tests and out-field calibration satellite tests. However, this simplified method is flawed in terms of its representativeness in spatial-temporal coverage and object types, because space objects vary greatly in orbit type, size, and shape, and thus the evaluation results may be overoptimistic. This paper proposes a practically implementable procedure to quickly and reliably evaluate the object detection performance of space surveillance sensors in which a catalog containing a vast number of on-orbit objects is used as a reference. It first constructs a unified model to estimate the size of objects from its radar cross section (RCS) data, then it presents a hierarchy scheme to efficiently compute object visibility, and finally, it makes the sensor performance evaluation through a data point matching technique. Experiments with two simulated sensors demonstrate that the realized performance is always inferior to the designed one, and in some cases the difference is significant and concerning. The presented approach could be routinely applied to evaluate the performance of any operational surveillance sensors and provide insight on how the sensor performance could be improved through refined design, manufacture, and operation.
Highlights
In recent years, space surveillance has gained more and more attention from spacefaring nations of the world, since it is becoming a fundamental part of the space battlefield.Space surveillance is realized by a network of sensors that continuously collect orbit data of Earth orbiting space objects over its intended space domain, and an orbit catalog can be maintained
Manufacturers, and operators of space object surveillance sensors, realized performance in space object detection in the real word should be the most important concern, and evaluation of this concern can not be achieved by simulations
This paper proposes to evaluate object detection performance by analyzing real data collected in the operational environment using cataloged on-orbit objects as reference
Summary
Space surveillance has gained more and more attention from spacefaring nations of the world, since it is becoming a fundamental part of the space battlefield. The realized detection probability can be modeled and analyzed as a function of the object type, signal to noise ratio (SNR), size, and orbit region This procedure for determining detection probability is better standardized, practically and routinely implementable, and can be applied to evaluate performance of various sensors. Such a procedure and subsequent software should be developed based on a real object catalog and issues about the object size and visibility computation should be addressed . The focus is on the fast and reliable detection performance evaluation of operating space surveillance sensors based on the use of an existing object catalog To achieve this aim, several important issues need to be addressed.
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