Multitarget data association using an optical neural network.

A neural network solution to the data association problem in multitarget tracking is presented. It uses position and velocity measurements of the targets over two consecutive time frames. A quadratic neural energy function, which is suitable for an optical processing implementation, results. Simulation resultsusing realistic target trajectories with target measurement noise including platform movement or jitter are presented. The results show that the network performs well when track data are corrupted by significant noise. Several possible optical neural network architectures to implement this algorithm are discussed, including a new all-optical matrix-vector multiplication approach. The matrix structure is employed to allow binary-ternary spatial light modulators to be used.