Track initiation algorithm for dim target using backward prediction

Track initiation of small targets using radar is challenging problem. It is a highly difficult when power resource of the radar is limited, because of low probability of measurement detection. In order to overcome the issues, one solution is to lower the threshold of measurement detection. However a large number of false alarms are detected at the same time and tracking cannot give a full performance due to mis-association. In this paper, we apply MHT(Multiple Hypothesis Tracking) for track initiation in low signal power environment. For better initiation performance, we propose the backward prediction MHT. It calculates the hypothesis probability, weighting that with signal strength distribution function and utilizing two signal detection thresholds and applying them according to the pseudo track formation. As performance evaluation, we compare the track initiation speed of the proposed method and the conventional method through Monte Carlo simulations. The proposed method shows better performance than conventional method in lower SNR environments.