Lockheed Martin Canada Research Articles

Land use mapping with evidential fusion of features extracted from polarimetric synthetic aperture radar and hyperspectral imagery

Abstract As part of the Earth Observation Application Development Program (EOADP) program sponsored by the Canada Space Agency, Lockheed Martin Canada––in partnership with Defense Research and Development Canada––has initiated a study aiming at studying the exploitation of the synergy between polarimetric SAR and hyperspectral imagery with the development of a system prototype called Intelligent Data Fusion System (IDFS). This system, based on the evidential fusion of features extracted from each type of imagery, is made of three modules. The polarimetric SAR module contains polarimetric classifiers, textural classifiers to provide hypotheses related to the textural and scattering properties of the illuminated area. The hyperspectral module contains an end-members selection technique and a collection of spectral indices. Each feature giving an incomplete representation of an object of interest, it is expected that the combination of complementary, redundant features will contribute to reduce the false alarm rate, improve the confidence in the target identification and the quality of the scene description as a whole. The combination of information provided by each feature extractor is performed according to the theory of evidence (Dempster–Shafer) in the third module. This paper presents an overview of the current functionality of IDFS. First results of evidential fusion are shown for land use mapping. Data sets were acquired over Indian-Head (Saskatchewan) with an airborne C-band polarimetric SAR and HSI Probe-1 sensors and were provided by the Canada Center for Remote Sensing.

Optimization of the Multi-Source Data Fusion System for Integration on the Canadian Patrol Frigate

Since 1991, the Research and Development (R&D) group at Lockheed Martin Canada (LM Canada) has been developing and demonstrating Level 1, 2, 3 and 4 data fusion, resource management and imaging technologies which will provide Observe-Orient-Decide-Act (OODA) decision making capabilities/tools in Naval and Airborne Command and Control (C2) for application on Canadian Patrol Frigates (CPF) and Canada’s CP-140 (Aurora) fixed wing aircraft. Over the last three years LM Canada, in collaboration with Canada’s Defence Research Establishment Valcartier (DREV), has also established a generic expert system infrastructure and has demonstrated that it is suitable for integrating these decision making technologies into real-time Command and Control System (CCS). The Multi-Source Data Fusion (MSDF) technology is the most mature among these decision making technologies and is likely to be integrated onboard a currently fielded CCS the soonest. Over the last two years the LM Canada R&D team has started the effort towards re-structuring and optimizing the proof-of-concept MSDF algorithms to establish a prototype which will be ready for integration on the existing platforms, specifically the CPF, and that can perform real-time tracking and identification by the end of the year 2000. This restructuring and optimization is occurring in phases.