New data association technique based on ACO with directional information considered

Due to the advantages of ant colony optimization (ACO) in solving complex problems, a new data association algorithm based on ACO in a cluttered environment called DACDA is proposed. In the proposed method, the concept for tour and the length of tour are redefined. Additionally, the directional information is incorporated into the proposed method because it is one of the most important factors that affects the performance of data association. Kalman filter is employed to estimate target states. Computer simulation results show that the proposed method could carry out data association in an acceptable CPU time, and the correct data association rate is higher than that obtained by the data association (DA) algorithm not combined with directional information.