HUIMIN CHEN, Member, IEEE
University of Connecticut
THIAGALINGAM KIRUBARAJAN, Member, IEEE
McMaster University
YAAKOV BAR-SHALOM, Fellow, IEEE
University of Connecticut
In this paper the problem of tracking multiple spawning targets with multiple finite-resolution sensors is considered and a new algorithm for measurement-to-track association with possibly unresolved measurements is presented. The goal is to initialize new tracks of spawned targets before they are resolved from the mother platform so that one has the ability to carry out early discrimination when they become resolved. The multiple scan data association problem is first formulated as a multidimensional assignment problem with explicit new constraints for the unresolved measurements. Then the top M hypotheses tracking (TMHT) is presented where the state estimates and their covariances are modified based on the M best hypotheses through the assignment solutions. A modification to the assignment problem is developed that leads to a linear programming (LP) where the optimal solution can be a noninteger in [0,1]. The fractional optimal solution is interpreted as (pseudo) probabilities over the N–1 frame sliding window. The best hard (binary) decision assignment solution and the M best via TMHT are compared with the soft decision solution for 2-D tracking scenarios with various sensor configurations. Based on the simulation results, the soft assignment approach has better track maintenance capability than the single best hard assignment and a performance nearly as good as the TMHT. Its computational load is slightly higher than the single best hard assignment but much lighter than TMHT.
Manuscript received June 13, 2002; revised December 6, 2005;
released for publication December 11, 2007.
IEEE Log No. T-AES/44/1/920384
Refereeing of this contribution was handled by X. R. Li.
This research was supported by ONR/BMDO Grants
N00014-00-1-0740, N00014-97-1-0502, and AFOSR Grant F409620-00-1-0052.
Authors' current addresses: H. Chen, Dept. of Electrical
Engineering, University of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA 70148;
Y. Bar-Shalom, Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering,
University of Connecticut, U-157, Storrs, CT 06269-2157, E-mail:
(ybs@ee.uconn.edu); T. Kirubarajan, Dept. of Electrical and
Computer Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario,
Canada.
0018-9251/08/$25.00 © 2008 IEEE