Counteracting the Effects of GNSS Jamming in a Maritime Multi-Target Scenario by Fusing AIS with Radar Data

Abstract

With the introduction of the Automatic Identification System (AIS) in 2004, GNSS became a cornerstone for traffic Situation assessment in the maritime domain. In this paper we study the impact of GNSS jamming on AIS and explore means of compensating potential AIS outages by fusing AIS with a GPS independent sensor such as radar. An IMM-JPDA filter was designed for multi-target tracking in presence of radar measurements originating from clutter. To demonstrate the working principle of the proposed scheme a dedicated measurement campaign was conducted in the Baltic Sea. In total three vessels were involved, two of them performing highly dynamic maneuvers at sea with the third vessel being anchored in the center of these maneuvers. This static vessel did not only monitor the scene by her radar, but was also equipped with a commercial high power GPS jammer.