Testing Performances of Radar Image Processing

Collision avoidance is one of the high-level safety objectives and requires a complete and reliable description of maritime traffic situation. A combined use of data provided by inde- pendent data sources is an approach to improve the accuracy and integrity of traffic related- information. In this paper the performance of a radar image processing technique is studied. To this purpose the acquisition of real-time radar images is simulated from previously defined on-board maritime scenarios. This allows the estimation of the performance of tracking algo- rithms based on the recursive Bayesian filtering approach as the solution for the dynamic state estimation. The predicted state is compared with the known position and velocity configured in the simulation. The presented results from these simulations outline the performance of the used filter algorithm. The work of this paper is integrated in the research and development activities of DLR Institute of Communications and Navigation dealing with the introduction of data and system integrity into the maritime traffic system. One of the aimed objectives is the automatic assessment of the traffic situation aboard a vessel including integrity information