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Distributed Object Discrimination for BMD

Award Information

Agency:
Department of Defense 		Branch:
Missile Defense Agency 		Award ID:
69484 		Program Year/Program:
2004 / SBIR
Agency Tracking Number:
B041-011-1026 		Solicitation Year:
N/A 		Solicitation Topic Code:
N/A 		Solicitation Number:
N/A
Small Business Information
ALPHATECH, INC.
6 New England Executive Park Burlington, MA 01803
View profile »
Woman-Owned: No
Minority-Owned: No
HUBZone-Owned: No
 
Phase 1
Fiscal Year: 2004
Title: Distributed Object Discrimination for BMD
Agency / Branch: DOD / MDA
Contract: FA8750-04-C-0199
Award Amount: $97,968.00
 

Abstract:

Object discrimination is one of the most important functions in ballistic missile defense since successful engagement and intercept of the warhead requires timely discrimination of lethal objects from decoys and other non-lethal objects. Multiple sensors exploiting diversity in phenomenology and viewing geometry can provide better discrimination information than a single sensor but exploiting this information requires a good fusion algorithm. Although centralized discrimination is theoretically optimal, distributed discrimination has advantages of lower communication bandwidth, robustness to failure, etc. The proposed research addresses key issues in distributed discrimination including choice of appropriate architecture, information to communicate among processing agents, optimal fusion algorithms, and communication strategies. It adopts the information graph model to analyze the dependence among processing agents so that information will not be double-counted. Object and sensor models represented by Bayesian networks are used to identify the minimum sufficient information that should be communicated and fused. An information-theoretic approach is used to decide when communication should take place. The Phase I effort will demonstrate the technical feasibility of distributed discrimination by integrating these components and comparing the resulting performance with that using centralized discrimination.

Principal Investigator:

Chee-Yee Chong
Chief Scientist
8588127874
cchong@alphatech.com

Business Contact:

John J. Barry
Contracts Manager
7812733388
jbarry@alphatech.com
Small Business Information at Submission:

ALPHATECH, INC.
6 New England Executive Park Burlington, MA 01803

EIN/Tax ID: 042654515
DUNS: N/A
Number of Employees:
Woman-Owned: No
Minority-Owned: No
HUBZone-Owned: No