Identifying and tracking convective weather cells

摘要

A method for tracking weather cells from a moving platform includes receiving, from a detection and ranging system, reflectivity data sampled for a volume of space and generating a feature map based on the reflectivity data, wherein the feature map is a representation of the volume of space that indicates locations with significant weather and generating a first segmented feature map based on the feature map that identifies the location and spatial extent of individual weather cells. The method further includes translating the first segmented feature map and a second segmented feature map, generated from data collected at a different point in time and/or space, to a common frame of reference and comparing the first segmented feature map to the second segmented feature map. The method further includes creating one or more track hypotheses based on the comparison of the first segmented feature map and the second segmented feature map.

主权项

1. A method comprising:
receiving, by a processor and from a detection and ranging system, reflectivity data sampled for a volume of space; generating, by the processor, a feature map based on the reflectivity data, wherein the feature map is a representation of the volume of space that indicates the spatial extent of objects to be tracked; generating, by the processor, a first segmented feature map based on the feature map; translating, by the processor, the first segmented feature map and a second segmented feature map to a common frame of reference; identifying, by the processor, one or more weather cells in the first segmented feature map, wherein each weather cell of the one or more weather cells corresponds to an area sampled with the detection and ranging system that has a VIR higher than a classification threshold; creating, by the processor, a cell mask for a weather cell of the one or more weather cells in the first segmented feature map; overlaying, by the processor, the cell mask from the first segmented feature map on one or more cell masks from the second segmented feature map; and generating, by the processor, a track hypothesis based on a comparison of the cell mask from the first segmented feature map to the one or more cell masks from the second segmented feature map.