Airborne Maritime Surveillance Using Magnetic Anomaly Detection Signature

• Published in: IEEE transactions on aerospace and electronic systems Vol. 56; no. 5; pp. 3476 - 3490
• Main Authors: Sithiravel, Rajiv, Balaji, Bhashyam, Nelson, Bradley, McDonald, Michael Kenneth, Tharmarasa, Ratnasingham, Kirubarajan, Thiagalingam
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.10.2020; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Airborne sensing; Airborne target tracking; Anomalies; Cramer-Rao bounds; Explosives detection; Geomagnetic field; Kinematics; Lower bounds; Magnetic anomalies; magnetic anomaly detection; Magnetic moments; Magnetic signatures; Magnetoacoustic effects; Magnetometers; maritime surveillance; Nonlinear filters; nonlinear target tracking; Ordnance; Sea measurements; Sea mines; Shipwrecks; Surveillance; Target detection; Target tracking; Tracking; Tracking problem; underwater target tracking
• ISSN: 0018-9251; 1557-9603
• DOI: 10.1109/TAES.2020.2973866

For an airborne sensor, there is a pressing need to be able to detect/track submerged submarines, shipwrecks, sea mines, unexploded explosive ordnance, and buried drums during maritime surveillance. Traditional usage is the magnetic anomaly detection (MAD), where the small changes in the earth's magnetic field caused by the ferrous components of the targets are measured. The primary means of long-range detection and classification of targets are with passive and active acoustic sensors, and MAD is used for accurate final localization. MAD could also be used for land-based targets but this is not common. Knowing the relationship between the magnetic signature and the kinematic parameters, the tracking problem can be formulated under a Bayesian framework. In this article, multiple nonlinear filters are used for a real single surface-target tracking problem in maritime surveillance using an airborne total-field sensor. The posterior Cramér–Rao lower bound for MAD is derived. Given the total-field measurements, these filters can estimate the kinematic states as well as the permanent moments and induced moments effectively. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed nonlinear filters as well as the impact of using MAD as part of airborne surveillance.