A queuing model for designing multi-modality buried target detection systems: Preliminary results

Many remote sensing modalities have been developed for buried target detection, each one offering its own relative advantages over the others. As a result there has been interest in combining several modalities into a single detection platform that benefits from the advantages of each constituent sensor, without suffering from their weaknesses. Traditionally this involves collecting data continuously on all sensors and then performing data, feature, or decision level fusion. While this is effective for lowering false alarm rates, this strategy neglects the potential benefits of a more general system-level fusion architecture. Such an architecture can involve dynamically changing which modalities are in operation. For example, a large standoff modality such as a forward-looking infrared (FLIR) camera can be employed until an alarm is encountered, at which point a high performance (but short standoff) sensor, such as ground penetrating radar (GPR), is employed. Because the system is dynamically changing its rate of advance and sensors, it becomes difficult to evaluate the expected false alarm rate and advance rate. In this work, a probabilistic model is proposed that can be used to estimate these quantities based on a provided operating policy. In this model the system consists of a set of states (e.g., sensors employed) and conditions encountered (e.g., alarm locations). The predictive accuracy of the model is evaluated using a collection of collocated FLIR and GPR data and the results indicate that the model is effective at predicting the desired system metrics.