Award

Objects tracked by optical sensors in ascent phase and midcourse are frequently obscured on the focal plane by countermeasures and debris (or clutter) that affect the performance of discrimination and tracking algorithms. Ascent phase can be especially challenging due to the presence of fuel fragments and constraints due to a short timeline and closely spaced objects (CSO) on the focal plane. Problems include missed detections, false alarms, corrupted signatures and masking of pixels that contain lethal objects. ExoAnalytic Solutions possesses a body of tools that have been used to demonstrate that, when unmitigated, clutter could negatively impact the performance of the BMDS system. The proposed effort will be to develop a focal plane clutter identification and mitigation algorithm suite. The suite uses multiple band focal plane data to identify regions of interest that contain clutter via characterization of the surface material properties found on the focal plane. Once identified, regions are processed by generating image maps that are manipulated to reject “hot” clutter thereby enhancing signatures of relatively “cool” targets of interest. This work will extend efforts previously completed by the authors in the areas of CSO and clutter mitigation in support of ascent phase intercept.