Wide Area Integrated Maritime Surveillance: An Updated Architecture with Data Fusion

An architecture has been proposed for an integrated maritime surveillance (IMS) system to support Canada's defense efforts in a network-centric or information-centric surveillance of the Canadian coasts, where many sensors, for example, HF radar, surface search radar, Automatic Dependent Surveillance (ADS) and imaging radar are used to gather information about the targets of interest. Typically, a realistic IMS system is a distributed one where the information processing is carried out in a number of locations and at different levels (e.g., local IMS, regional IMS or national surveillance center). This paper will discuss IMS, propose an architecture for an IMS system and give some specifications for the proposed IMS system. The paper will describe the implemented data fusion engine. Desirable features are also given in the paper.