Tracking a meneuvering target in clutter-a new approach

We consider the problem of tracking a maneuvering target in clutter. In such an environment, missed detections and false alarms make it impossible to decide, with certainty, the origin of the received echoes. Two inadequacies in the existing approaches [1]to handle this problem are: 1. Optimisation of detection characteristics has not been considered and 2. Features that can be used in the plot-to-track association are restricted to a specific class. This paper presents a new approach free of these limitations. Tracking a maneuvering target in clutter becomes feasible and tracking performance of weak targets is improved. A novel false track detection criterion is also introduced.