Target tracking in heavy-tailed clutter using amplitude information

Harbor surveillance above and below the sea surface depends on sensors such as surveillance radar and multibeam sonar. These sensors attempt to detect and track moderately observable targets such as small boats or human divers in environments which often are characterized by heavy-tailed backgrounds. Target tracking in heavy-tailed environments is challenging even for moderately strong targets due to the more frequent occurrences of target-like outliers. One strategy for increased robustness is to use the backscattered signal strengths together with the kinematic measurements in the tracking method. This paper proposes two new amplitude likelihoods for target tracking in heavy-tailed backgrounds. The first likelihood works by incorporating the uncertainty of the background estimate. The second likelihood explicitly treats the background as heavy-tailed using the K-distribution.