Method of target tracking with Doppler blind zone constraint

Abstract

Doppler blind zone (DBZ) has a bad influence on the airborne early warning radar, although it has good detection performance for low altitude targets with pulse Doppler (PD) technology. In target tracking, the blind zone can cause target tracking breakage easily. In order to solve this problem, a parallel particle filter (PF) algorithm based on multi-hypothesis motion models (MHMMs) is proposed. The algorithm produces multiple possible target motion models according to the DBZ constraint. Particles are updated with the constraint in each motion model. Once the first measurement from the target which reappears from DBZ falls into the particle cloud formed by any model, the measurement-track association succeeds and track breakage is avoided. The simulation results show that on the condition of different DBZ ranges, a high association ratio can be got for targets with different maneuverability levels, which accordingly improves the tracking quality.