GMTI Tracker Demo

We’ve made a version of our new GMTI (Ground Moving Target Indication) tracker available to try out at hawkstream.net/tracker_replay.html

You can upload recorded radar data in Stanag 4607 and see what track output would have been produced, and the controls allow you to move back and forwards in the timeline.

What is a tracker?

Sensor systems such as radars typically produce detections of moving targets of interest. These are often received as snapshots, a picture of targets present in the scene at a particular point in time, sometimes referred to as dwells or revisits. Since there may be a delay of a few seconds before the next update is received, it is sometimes difficult to get a sense of how objects are moving in the scene. This is where a tracker can help: it attempts to match up targets between dwells or revisits, and builds a model of how objects are moving. The internal tracker models can then be used to extrapolate or predict where an object will move next, allowing position updates between radar data detections, providing a smoother, more up-to-date representation of target positions.

GMTI and Stanag 4607

GMTI data from radar systems is often output in Stanag 4607 format. This is a NATO standard for the interchange of radar data, and our tracker can accept this (and other formats) as an input. When running in real-time mode, this is typically input via a network connection. In replay mode (as in the demo), data is read in from file.

Tracking large numbers of targets

Tracking targets can be computationally intensive. In particular, the task of associating new target detections with existing tracks becomes challenging as the number of tracks grows. We have pioneered a new method of track association, which allows for more tracks to be maintained on any given level of compute resource.