Distributed Data Fusion Architecture for

Lockheed Martin Canada is currently developing on its blackboard-based architecture a distributed data fusion system that will be used to study the performance of various information sharing processes between collaborative platforms. The requirements for this project are consistent with those of the NCW that are to insure a timely exchange of secured (uncorrupted) information through the network whose topology is unknown (i.e. the cooperating platforms does not need to know how many they are, who they are and where they are); the circulation of information will not be affected if a platform is not capable of communicating or is destroyed. Each platform involved in the collaborative effort has its own sensor suite and communicates with the other with a LINK-type broadcast. This paper presents the design architecture of the distributed data fusion system that has been selected by Lockheed Martin Canada. This system will permit to evaluate various measures of performances selected from the Single Integrated Air Picture metrics (commonality, consistency, timeliness) to quantify the quality of the common operating picture built by fusing the information exchanged between collaborative platforms. The proposed approach is an alternative to a full-scale decentralized architecture that uses fusion algorithms such as the Covariance Intersection aiming to provide scalability and reliability. Results reported so far in the literature show poor performances with such an algorithm and authors are reconsidering the operational validity of the full scale decentralized architecture by introducing a priori knowledge about the source and destination of the shared information. Such knowledge exist in the use tracklet approach that provides as the CI a mean to avoid data incest at the cost of sending additional information to keep track of the history of the data fusion process. In the network architecture proposed by Lockheed Martin Canada, each platform maintains two tracks database. A local track database that contain the local track estimates produced by the fusion of the measurements created from the local sensor tracks. A global track database that contain the fused RTO-MP-0 Paper presented at the RTO SCI Symposium on “Multi-Platform Integration of Sensors and Weapons Systems for Maritime Applications”, held in Norfolk, USA, 21-23 October 2002, and published in RTO-MP-097(I).