User based data fusion approaches

Technology advances in computers, sensors, communications, navigation systems, etc. have lead to significant increases in throughput and capacity of systems. This phenomenon has lead to vast amounts of data residing in C4ISR systems and available to users. In addition that large amounts of data requires updating and taxes communications resources supporting those system. This situation creates a significant information overload to the users in many operational environments, when the data is presented in a "raw" form. Without advanced data/information fusion architectures and techniques, the user, often resorts to viewing that data from a single sensor or single database viewpoint. In many cases, the user performs the data fusion by "cycling" though the data and database, as similarities or changes in the data are seen or heard. In effect the user's eyes and ears performs, visual and acoustic "data" fusion. In many tactical and intelligence environments, the war fighter may need to perform data fusion across the myriad databases (e.g. communications, datalink, combat direction, command and control, intelligence, etc,) so that information is produced from data that resides in databases or are available from real time/non real time sensors. Without data fusion, the user is faced with dealing in data that is redundant, inconsistent and conflicting. In many cases there are errors in measurements and data may be incomplete. To support the user, data fusion architectures must be examined to prevent/mitigate information overload and to expedite processing of the vast amounts of data. This paper examines the user's data fusion challenges, examines three major architectures for fusion and provides results from the architectures examined, which include: a. Centralized data fusion approach data fusion over all data residing in the databases available where the fused data would be deposited in a "fusion" database. b. Leaving databases completely separate and perform the data fusion only when the use/user fusion requires/needs the information. c. Hybrids of the two. Pros and cons for each architecture are presented and examples provided in a littoral environment. The approach presented is significant and will lead to architectures for fusion in defense, intelligence, and homeland defense and air traffic control systems.