Track Initialization for Multi-Static Active Sonar Systems
Christian G. Hempel · OCEANS 2007 - Europe · 2007
The process of track initialization has two main parts: determining when a new contact of interest has appeared in the search region and computing an initial state estimate to be given to the tracking algorithm. The author has developed a new method for detecting the arrival of a new contact of interest in monostatic systems that partitions the detection level data into Hough Transform type bins. For discrete data (e.g., sonar echoes), the Hough transform is a histogram version of the discrete Radon transform where the data are partitioned into sets of non-overlapping bins at various angles that represent different possible target track trajectories. The new method tests the data in each Hough bin for the arrival of a new contact of interest with Page's test which is designed to detect changes in state by accumulating the values of an appropriate detector non-linearity. The purpose of the effort reported here is to investigate the applicability of the new method to multi-static systems. The theoretical performance predictions of the new method are quite favorable for monostatic systems; orders of magnitude reduction in the number of false tracks initialized with no reduction in target latency when compared to a popular M of N type method on a search region having realistic size and clutter density. In multi-static systems, however, the effects of high clutter density and poor data registration may increase the average latency for initializing target tracks when using the new method in a centralized architecture.