Toronto, September 2009: End of the cold war era sparked renewed interest in asymmetric warfare due to the transformation of adversaries to entities of significantly lower resources who use significantly different tactics than the conventional forces. In the case of the Navy, this transition dictates the development of sensor systems that can detect and identify low contrast objects, such as small boats, before they can breach the defensive layers of ships. Effectiveness of asymmetric warfare adversary and the importance of counter-measures against them are apparent from the events like USS Cole attack and piracy attacks near the coast of Somalia, where Canada is providing security to commercial ships as a part of a multinational team.
AUG Signals has been awarded a DRDC-Atlantic contract that aims to analyze an extensive set of EO/IR image data for the purposes of:
1. Estimation of contrast signatures of small boat pixels in four EO/IR bands for different aspect angles, ranges, boat sizes and boat types.
2. Estimation of contrast signatures of white-water bow wake pixels in four EO/IR bands for different aspect angles, ranges, and boat sizes, types and speeds.
Over the course of the project, a fully automated algorithm to detect the small boats and their wakes, and to separate them will be developed. This will be accomplished by a three-stage procedure:
1. CFAR detection of small boats together with their wakes in single frame images
2. Clutter reduction in CFAR detection results
3. Separation of small boats from wakes using image sequences
AUG Signals’ detection, clutter reduction and segmentation algorithms will be adapted for the demarcation of small boats and wakes using EO/IR image sequences. EO/IR contrast signatures of boats and wakes will be estimated by adapting an algorithm available in the literature.
For more information, please contact Dr. Abhijit Sinha.