Extended first-order Bayes filter for force aggregation
Ronald Mahler · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2002
A group target is a group of individual targets which are part of some larger military formation (battalion, brigade, tank column, aircraft, carrier group, etc.). Force aggregation (also known as Level 2 fusion or situation assessment) is the process of detecting, tracking, and identifying group targets. In an AeroSense Conference paper last year I proposed a theoretically unified and potentially practical approach to force aggregation based on finite-set statistics (FISST). Cluster processes were used to model the force aggregation problem. An optimal (but computationally intractable) Bayes filter was derived for force aggregation. Potential computational tractability was achieved by generalizing the concept of a first-order multitarget moment filter to group targets. Laser year, lack of space prevented me from explicitly describing the prediction and correction equations for this group-PHD filter. I do so in this paper, generalizing the PHD filter to include spontaneously generated targets. I also take this opportunity to respond to some recent published criticisms of FISST.