Binary integrator for fixed cell radar alarm data

Claim 1

A method of determining whether M cell alarms have occurred in the last N processing times over an area of K cells, where M≦N, comprising, providing a memory which is N bits wide by K words long, said bits corresponding to the last N processing times and said words corresponding to said K cells, each of said K words in said memory having a tag bit associated therewith, defining N successive processing intervals, responsive to the occurrence of a cell alarm or alarms in one of said N processing intervals, placing a binary 1 in the end-most bit of each word which corresponds to a cell in which an alarm has occurred and shifting all information in the word one bit position in the direction away from said end-most bit, during the interval in which said alarm or alarms have occurred, setting the tag bit associated with each word which has a binary 1 in said end-most bit, determining which of said tag bits are set at the end of each processing interval, inserting binary 0's in the end-most bits and shifting all information in the word one bit position in the direction away from said end-most bit of each word which has a tag bit associated therewith which is not set, determining which of said words include at least M binary 1's and storing the addresses of said words which have at least M binary 1's.

Claim 2

A method of determining whether M cell alarms have occurred in the last N processing times over an area of K cells, where M≦N, comprising, providing a memory which is N bits wide by K words long, said bits corresponding to the last N processing times and said words corresponding to said K cells, each of said K words in said memory having a tag bit associated therewith, defining N successive processing intervals, responsive to the occurrence of a cell alarm or alarms in one of said N processing intervals, placing a binary 1 in the end-most bit of each word which corresponds to a cell in which an alarm has occurred and shifting all information in the word one bit position in the direction away from said end-most bit, during the interval in which said alarm or alarms have occurred, setting the tag bit associated with each word which has a binary 1 in said end-most bit, determining which of said tag bits are set at the end of each processing interval, inserting binary 0's in the end-most bits and shifting all information in the word one bit position in the direction away from said end-most bit of each word which has a tag bit associated therewith which is not set, determining which of said words include at least M binary 1's and storing the addresses of said words which have at least M binary 1's.