Darko Mušicki

Target tracking determines the number and the trajectories of targets in the surveillance area. The sensors provide an imperfect target detection and measurement environment, complicated by clutter measurements. The vast majority of published target tracking algorithms assume that the probability of target detection is independent of the trajectory state. This assumption is often incorrect, with subsequent degradation in the target tracking performance. The authors present two multitarget trackers which incorporate the state‐dependent probability of target detection, each of which improves upon the state of the art capabilities of target tracking in such environments.

The authors extend the smoothing integrated probabilistic data association algorithm to multi‐target tracking in clutter, or alternatively, use smoothing to improve the joint integrated probabilistic data association (JIPDA) algorithm. The predictions of forward and backward JIPDA are fused to form the smoothing prediction, which is used for smoothing multi‐target data association.

In this paper, a one-point track initiation method is derived for conventional target tracking systems where noisy sensor measurements of both target position and Doppler are available. Tentative tracks are initiated using position measurements from every single scan and the associated Doppler measurements are incorporated to reduce the velocity uncertainties of these initiated track states. The proposed track initiation method is capable of reducing the computational requirements of the system quadratically compared to the classical two-point method when false measurements are present. We further demonstrate that a tracking system which incorporates Doppler measurements both for track initiation and measurement-to-track association can greatly reduce the number of false tracks that are generated and provides greater flexibility for confirming true tracks without sacrificing the system's performance in terms of the number of confirmed false tracks. As a consequence, a tracking system that incorporates the proposed method will exhibit a much shorter true track confirmation delay than a similar system based on the standard approach.