Extended target tracking applied to X-band marine radar data

X-band marine radar systems are flexible and low-cost tools for monitoring multiple targets in a surveillance area. They are able to provide high resolution measurements in both space and time. Such features offer the opportunity to get accurate information not only about the targets´ kinematics but also about the targets´ extents. The tracking of these kinds of data is usually called extended target tracking (ETT). In this paper, we propose a signal processing chain mainly composed by a pixel-wise detector and a joint probabilistic data association tracker to handle the problem of multiple ETT. The performance assessment is conducted on real data acquired by an X-band marine radar located in the Gulf of La Spezia, Italy. The experimental results demonstrate that the processing chain is able to reach high performance with a limited computational burden.