NEURAL NETWORK BASED DATA FUSION SYSTEM FOR SOURCE LOCALIZATION

A method is described for providing an estimate of the state of a moving contact. The method comprises providing a device for estimating the state of the contact, inputting information about a location of an observer platform at particular time intervals and information from at least one sensor about a position of the moving contact relative to the observer platform at each time interval into the device, transforming the inputted information into a series of geographical grids with one grid being formed for each reading of the at least one sensor; combining grids corresponding to similar time intervals into a series of consolidated grid representations; and analyzing the series of consolidated grid representations to produce an estimate of the state of the contact at a final point in time where an observation was made. The device of the present invention includes a grid stimulation block for forming the geographical grids, a fusion block for forming the consolidated grid representations, a correlation block for providing a path likelihood vector, and an estimation block for providing the desired estimate.