Performance Improvement of Electro Optic Search and Track System for Maritime Surveillance

Surveillance of maritime domain is absolutely vital to ensure an appropriate response against any adverse situation relating to maritime safety or security. Electro-optic search and track (EOST) system plays a vital role by providing independent search and track of potential targets in marine environment. EOST provides real-time images of objects with details, required to neutralise threats. At long range, detection and tracking capability of EOST degrades due to uncertainty in target signatures under cluttered scenario. Image quality can be improved by using suitable sensors and enhancement using the target/background signature knowledge. Robust tracking of object can be achieved by optimising the performance parameters of tracker. In the present work, improvement in the performance of EOST subsystems such as sensor, video processor and video tracker are discussed. To improve EOST performance in terms of detection and tracking, sensor selection criterion and various real time image processing techniques and their selection criteria for maritime applications have been also discussed. Resultant improvement in the quality of image recorded under marine environment has been presented.