A Multipath Viterbi Data Association Algorithm with uncertain ionospheric state

The tracking system of over-the-horizon-radars (OTHR) inevitably output multiple tracks for one target in radar coordinate because of serious multiple propagation modes. At the same time, great error is usually introduced for the uncertain of the ionospheric state. In this paper, a multipath Viterbi data association (MVUI) algorithm with uncertain ionospheric state is proposed, through modeling target movement in ground coordinate and implementing data association in radar coordinate so that Viterbi data association (VDA) is extended from association between measurement and track to association among measurement, propagation mode and track. The simulation results show that MVUI improves the tracking performance at low probabilities of detection.