Quickest Detection of Intermittent Signals With Application to Vision Based Aircraft Detection

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new optimal stopping rule for rapidly detecting intermittent signals, with applications in vision-based aircraft detection, showing improved detection range and false alarm rates over existing methods.

Contribution

The paper develops a novel quickest intermittent signal detection rule with a threshold structure and provides performance bounds and a new delay estimation filter.

Findings

Improved detection range in aircraft detection applications

Reduced false alarm rates compared to current techniques

Effective performance demonstrated through simulation and real-world application

Abstract

In this paper we consider the problem of quickly detecting changes in an intermittent signal that can (repeatedly) switch between a normal and an anomalous state. We pose this intermittent signal detection problem as an optimal stopping problem and establish a quickest intermittent signal detection (ISD) rule with a threshold structure. We develop bounds to characterise the performance of our ISD rule and establish a new filter for estimating its detection delays. Finally, we examine the performance of our ISD rule in both a simulation study and an important vision based aircraft detection application where the ISD rule demonstrates improvements in detection range and false alarm rates relative to the current state of the art aircraft detection techniques.