A digital Fast Pattern Processor (DFPP) system under development for the Naval Air Warfare Center, is funded under a SBIR, Phase III contract. It is an automatic target recognizer and tracker candidate for supersonic missile guidance and unmanned air vehicle (UAV) reconnaissance to meet the U.S. navy's time-critical strike objectives. The former application requires rapid processing of moderate size, real time image arrays, versus large real time image arrays for the latter case. The DFPP correlates operator selected target filters against observed imagery at 1500 correlations per second as currently implemented with programmable logic devices (PLD's) - equivalent to thirty Pentium III (1 GHz) PC's. High performance and low weight, power, size, cost of the current version make it ideal for on-board image data processing in UAV's and cruise missiles or for ground station processing. Conversion to application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) technology provides scalable performance to meet future ATR/ATT needs. The Sanders proprietary DFPP technology embodies a Power-FFT, which is the fastest digital fast Fourier transform (DFTT) in the world with performance exceeding supercomputers, at a small fraction of the cost, size, weight, and power. The DFPP operates under control of Sanders Correlation Image Processor (SCIP) program and enables correlation against a plethora of stored target filters (templates).
A FPR System under development for the Naval Air Warfare Center, China Lake, CA is funded under a SBIR, Phase II contract as an automatic target recognizer and tracker candidate for Navy fast-reaction, subsonic and supersonic, stand-off weapons. The FPR will autonomously detect, identify, correlate, and track complex surface ship and land based targets in hostile, high-clutter environments in real time. The novel FPR system is proven technology that uses an electronic implementation analogous to an optical correlator system, where the Fourier transform of the incoming image is compared against known target images stored as matched filter templates. FPR demonstrations show that unambiguous target identification is achievable in a ninety-five percent fog obscuration for over ninety-percent of target images tested. The FPR technology employs an acoustic dispersive delay line (DDL) to achieve ultra-fast image correlations in 90 microseconds or 11,000 correlations per second. The massively scalable FPR design is capable of achieving processing speeds of an order of magnitude faster using available ASIC technology. Key benefits of the FPR are dramatically reduced power, size, weight, and cost with increased durability, robustness, and performance - which makes the FPR ideal for onboard missile applications.
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