Tracking and detecting highs maneuvering weak targets

Abstract

Modern military targets as aircraft are able to perform high maneuvers due to their complex design. This ability of maneuvers includes sudden changes in acceleration and high-G turns that are not achievable from traditional military targets. Moreover, recent military targets generally have a low radar cross-section or low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) profile, which makes the detection and tracking of those maneuvering targets a complicated dynamic state estimation problem. In this case, the track-before-detect filter (TBDF) that uses unthresholded measurements is considered as an effective method for tracking and detecting a single maneuvering target under low SNR conditions. Nevertheless, the performance of the algorithm will be affected by severe loss because of the mismatching of target model during maneuver. To resolve the target maneuvers, we propose an application of particle filtering, which depends on TBD. We employ the constant acceleration model and coordinate turn model. Our simulation results show that the detection and tracking of maneuvering target performance of TBDF has been improved using the proposed algorithm.