A New Track Initiation Method for HFCSSMR

High Frequency Combined Sky and Surface- Wave Monostatic Radar (HFCSSMR) is a new type of over-the-horizon radar which utilizes a combined propagation mode of sky and surface waves for target detection. The radar may receive four different propagation modes' echoes from a single target without considering the ionospheric stratification. When the one-point track initiation algorithm is applied, all the propagation modes need to be initiated, and the amount of computation is extensive. This article proposes a new track initiation method in HFCSSMR to solve this problem, which first uses the prior information of ionospheric height to determine the propagation mode of echoes, and then initiates the state estimation and covariance for the determined modes rather than all modes. The simulation results show that this method can achieve effective propagation mode judgment, so as to reduce the amount of calculation of target tracking in HFCSSMR.