Combinational Hough transform for surveillance radar target detection in a 3-D data map

A new method based on Hough transform is introduced for detection of linear trajectories in a 3-D data space. Data space is constructed from returned radar data using range, bearing, and time information. This information is then mapped into a 3-D Cartesian data space. The near constant velocity target trajectories appear as straight lines in this space, and are detected by the usage of the new method which is based on two 2-D Hough transforms in the bearing-time and range-time data spaces. The efficacy of this combinational Hough transform method is verified by simulation and shown that it has a better performance, as compared with one 2-D data map case, where only uses the range-time information.