Target maneuver detection using Doppler measurement

Reliable and timely decision on target onset is the key of decision-based single-model techniques for maneuvering target tracking, and the performance of maneuver detector can be improved by making use of Doppler measurement extensively. In this paper, a novel approach for detecting unknown maneuver is proposed. To avoid the unresolvedness of acceleration estimator when measurement noise level is high or tangential acceleration is present, a more accurate one is proposed, which uses Doppler measurement by solving optimization problem based on the Mahalanobis distance. A sequential maneuver detector is thus developed based on the Neyman-Pearson criterion to overcome threshold shifting which results from the maneuver detection delay. Finally, the simulation results show that the proposed detector possesses a lower average detection delay.