Track Initiation of Occasionally Unresolved Radar Targets

In a dense detection environment track-while-scan algorithms will introduce many false tracks when processing is performed on a scan-by-scan basis. The maximum likelihood solution involving all detections on all scans is formulated and evaluated for the initiation problem consisting of false alarms, missed detections, and unresolved detections. A comparison is made between the maximum likelihood solutions including and not including the resolution likelihood and it is shown that the resolution likelihood must be included if the data contain unresolved detections. While the maximum likelihood method (with unresolved detections) does not appear to be implementable in real time without very high speed integrated circuit (VHSIC) technology, it can be used as a standard to which more implementable methods can be compared.