Detection & tracking method for radar target based on plot‐track quality evaluation
Yonghong Xia, Ning Zhang, Huaxing Kuang, Yutao Zhang · The Journal of Engineering · 2019
A joint target detection and tracking method based on plot‐track quality evaluation (PTQE‐D&T) is proposed here. The presented method consists of three consecutive steps. First, a set of candidate plots is extracted from the Detector and Plot‐Extractor, where the plot quality is calculated simultaneously based on multi‐dimensional echoes constituting the plot. Then, a track‐before‐detect (TBD) processor based on dynamic programming (DP) is utilised to jointly elaborate the observations from multiple scans and outputs potential tracks to be confirmed. Finally, a confirmation strategy is introduced via plot‐track quality evaluation. Experimental results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method, where two data sets collected from a ground‐based surface‐search radar and a ship borne 3D radar are used. Moreover, the proposed PTQE‐D&T structure is totally consistent with conventional radar data processing architecture, meaning that it is promising in engineering applications.