Joint Integrated PDA Avoiding Track Coalescence

Joint PDA approach is very effective in tracking multiple targets in data association environment, with clutter measurements and missed detections. Joint IPDA has built upon this by including the probability of target existence as a track quality measure to enable automatic tracking and track maintenance in data association environment. Both JPDA and JIPDA suffer from the problem of track coalescence, where tracks following targets whose trajectories don´t separate for extended time start following "center" of these targets. JPDA^*is an extension of JPDA which combats coalescence by pruning possible measurement to track allocation hypotheses. Following JPDA^*derivation, this paper derives JIPDA^*, an extension of JIPDA which also combats track coalescence. JIPDA^*updates the probability of target existence as the track quality measure. A simulation study verifies the effectiveness of this approach and compares JIPDA^*with JIPDA and IPDA when tracking crossing targets in an environment of heavy clutter.