Minimum necessary data rates for accurate track fusion

Advances in technology are making distributed networks of sensor platforms a reality for surveillance systems. Such networks provide many benefits including the ability to cover a broader area, to compute more accurate target estimates and provide a reduction in susceptibility to countermeasures. In spite of these advantages, many practical issues remain in the deployment of such networks. One such significant issue is bandwidth limitations on the communication channels between the sensor platforms. This paper examines the effect of bandwidth restrictions on a decentralised system architecture. In such a structure, each sensor tracks targets within its individual surveillance region and then transmits its track data to a global fusion centre. The minimum necessary data rates required to permit reconstruction of the global track estimates to a given level of accuracy are presented in the case when the track state can be represented by a Gauss-Markov system. © 2005 IEEE.