Improved multiple hypothesis tracking using incomplete measurements for group targets

Tracking targets within a group has received much attention in the radar field recently years. Group targets are usually closely spaced with similar velocity, making it hard to distinguish multiple targets. For precise target tracking, the tracking radar usually employs a narrow beam to achieve the high range-angular resolution. However, targets may enter and exit the narrow beam frequently during the observation, bringing difficulty for stable tracking. Moreover, it is also hard to distinguish different targets when their tracks intersect on the range-doppler plane. These kinds of incomplete measurements increase the difficulty of group targets' association and tracking. Therefore, this paper proposes an improved multiple hypothesis tracking method using incomplete measurements. The adaptive detection probability model and track intersecting probability are combined in the multiple hypothesis tracking framework to reduce false associations and improve tracking performance. Finally, simulation and experiment results verified the effectiveness of the proposed method.