SA-HPMHT for Maritime Dim Targets Tracking With Sensor Location Uncertainty

To address the problem of tracking low signal-to-clutter ratio (SCR) maritime targets with sensor location uncertainty, an effective track-before-detect (TBD) method, called the state augmentation histogram probabilistic multihypothesis tracking (SA-HPMHT) algorithm, is proposed in this article. In this algorithm, the initialization of new tracks is realized based on the constant false alarm rate (CFAR) detector with a low threshold and the
${K}$
-means clustering algorithm. The target and sensor states are then simultaneously estimated in an iterative manner via a synthetic histogram and state augmentation (SA) method. In each iteration, we update the estimated sensor state and yield more accurate measured images, allowing for improved performance of detection and tracking targets. Finally, an
${M}/{N}$
logic technology is invoked to confirm or terminate the tracks. The results of simulation and real dataset verification show that the SA-HPMHT algorithm has a better performance compared with the histogram probabilistic multihypothesis tracking (H-PMHT) algorithm and the sequential Monte Carlo probability hypothesis density (SMC-PHD) algorithm.