<title>Simulation study to characterize thermal infrared sensor false alarms</title>

Abstract

That smart munitions false alarms result from randomly-spaced fixed position discrete physical objects within the background is the standard assumption for false target treatment in several smart munitions performance and effectiveness models. This premise is tested in a simulation study which identifies specific terrain features causing a hypothetical thermal infrared smart munitions sensor to false alarm. The sensor configuration and the target detection algorithms are input to the Waterways Experiment Station (WES) smart munitions sensor model which is "flown" over high resolution calibrated thermal imagery of several test sites for which there is ground truth. Target detection decisions in these target-free backgrounds are mapped into large scale color aerial photographs taken simultaneously with the thermal imagery. False alarm-causing terrain features are identified from the aerial photographs and are characterized as a function of test site, time of day, and target acquisition algorithm used. Several important characteristics of thermal false alarms are formulated.