The challenge of scalable and distributed fusion of disparate sources of information

A key enabler for Network Centric Warfare (NCW) is a sensor network that can collect and fuse vast amounts of disparate and complementary information from sensors that are geographically dispersed throughout the battlespace. This information will lead to better situation awareness so that commanders will be able to act faster and more effectively. However, these benefits are possible only if the sensor data can be fused and synthesized for distribution to the right user in the right form at the right time within the constraints of available bandwidth. In this paper we consider the problem of developing Level 1 data fusion algorithms for disparate fusion in NCW. These algorithms must be capable of operating in a fully distributed (or decentralized) manner; must be able to scale to extremely large numbers of entities; and must be able to combine many disparate types of data. To meet these needs we propose a framework that consists of three main components: an attribute-based state representation that treats an entity state as a collection of attributes, new methods or interpretations of uncertainty, and robust algorithms for distributed data fusion. We illustrate the discussion in the context of maritime domain awareness, mobile adhoc networks, and multispectral image fusion.