The Canadian Tracking and Fusion Group (CTFG) was established to bring
together tracking and fusion researchers and practitioners from across
government, industry and academia with the objective of providing a forum
for issues of common interest across diverse fields of application,
including land, air, space, maritime and underwater.

Annual workshops are held to promote discussion and collaboration. The
IEEE Ottawa Section was a major supporter of the workshop in assisting in
its organization, advertising and local arrangements. This year’s CTFG
Workshop 2011 was held March 9-11, 2011 in Ottawa, bringing together 57
individuals from 21 organizations for presentations, discussion and
collaboration. Participants included government from several Defence R&D
Canada (DRDC) centres (Ottawa, Atlantic and Valcartier) and the
Communications Research Centre, academia from McGill University, McMaster
University, Memorial University, Royal Military College and the
University of British Columbia, and a broad spectrum of industry
representatives.

The workshop was supported by IEEE Ottawa Section, the IEEE AES Ottawa
Chapter, IEEE SP/OE/GRS Ottawa Joint Chapter, Raytheon Canada and Larus
Technologies. It was co-hosted by DRDC. It consisted of 3 days of
presentations and demonstrations by various Canadian defence scientists,
academic and industrial researchers. Day 1 focused on target tracking and
sensor management, while Day 2 focused on data fusion and decision
support and Day 3 concluded the workshop with demonstrations by
Raytheon’s Intelligence and Information Systems (IIS) division as it
presented and demonstrated the Digital Command Ground Station (DCGS)
activities and its future extensions; Larus Technologies demonstrated its
Nexus Fusion Engine and the ETF Lab of McMaster University demonstrated
its target tracking test-bed.

CTFG Workshop 2011 was co-chaired by Zhen (Jack) Ding, Garfield Mellema,
Pierre Valin (DRDC), Thia Kirubarajan (McMaster University), Rami
Abielmona (Larus Technologies) and Tony Ponsford (Raytheon Canada). CTFG
Workshop 2012 will be held in Ottawa next March-April. More information
about the CTFG and these workshops can be found on the CTFG website at
http://www.ctfg.ca.