Detection, Tracking and Classification of Vehicles and Aircraft based on Magnetic Sensing Technology

Existing ground movement surveillance technologies at airports are subjected to limitations due to shadowing effects or multiple reflections. Therefore, there is a strong demand for a new sensing technology, which will be cost effective and will provide detection of non-cooperative targets under any weather conditions. This paper aims to present a new intelligent system, developed within the framework of the EC-funded ISMAEL project, which is based on a new magnetic sensing technology and provides detection, tracking and automatic classification of targets moving on the airport surface. The system is currently being installed at two European airports. Initial experimental results under real airport traffic demonstrate the great potential of the proposed system.




References:
[1] European Commission, Single European Sky, European Communities,
2001
[2] EUROCONTROL, Air Traffic Statistics and Forecasts: Forecast of
Annual Number of IFR Flights (2004-2010), Vol. 2.
[3] R. Baron, "Runway Incursions: Where are we", http:// airlinesafety.com
/editorials/RunwayIncursions.htm
[4] http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20011008-0.
[5] C. Ntabanas "Electronic low visibility systems for aerodromes", In
Proceedings of the First International Conference on Airports Planning,
Design and Operation, 509, 2003.
[6] H. Gao, M. Weinmann, C. Stockhammer, N. Grammalidis, I.
Gragopoulos, K. Dimitropoulos, Th. Heuer and U. Hartmann. ISMAEL
- Intelligent surveillance and management for airfield applications based
on low cost magnetic field detectors, Joint International Symposium on
Sensors and Systems for Airport Surveillance, 2005.
[7] H. Gao and U. Hartmann, Einsatz hochempfindlicher
Magnetfeldsensoren zur Erfassung von Fahrzeugen, Magazin Forschung
1, 2, 2004.
[8] S. Blackman and R. Popoli, Design and analysis of modern tracking
systems, Artech House, Boston, USA, 1999.
[9] I.J. Cox and S.L. Hingorani, An Efficient Implementation of Reid's
Multiple Hypothesis Tracking Algorithm and its Evaluation for the
Purpose of Visual Tracking, IEEE Transactions on pattern analysis and
machine intelligence, 18, 138, 1996
[10] W.H. Press, S.A. Teukolsky, W.T. Vetterling and B.P. Flannery,
"Numerical recipes in C: The art of scientific computing", Cambridge
University Press, Second edition, 1998.