Tracking targets in G0 clutter via dynamic programming based track-before-detect

This paper considers the target tracking problem through the use of dynamic programming based track-before-detect (DP-TBD) in G0 clutter, where G0 clutter is used to model radar clutter returns received by small grazing angle or high resolution radars. The amplitude probability density functions of the clutter-only and target-plus-clutter cases are derived and the latter one is approximated using the sum of weighted incomplete gamma functions since no close-form solution exists. Then loglikelihood (LL) and log-likelihood ratio (LLR) are derived and used in the integration process of DP-TBD respectively. Various simulations are used to examine the performance of DP-TBD using different scoring functions.