A new multiple extended target tracking algorithm using PHD filter

• A particle implement of the extended target PHD (ET-P-PHD) filter is derived.
• A K-means clustering based partition method to decrease partitions is proposed.
• A gating method to simplify the calculation of the coefficients is proposed.
• The ET-P-PHD filter can well deal with the nonlinear tracking problems.
• The two proposed methods improve the computational efficiency of ET-P-PHD filter.

A new multiple extended target tracking algorithm using the probability hypothesis density (PHD) filter is proposed in our study, to solve problems on tracking performance degradation of the extended target PHD (ET-PHD) filter under the nonlinear conditions and its intolerable computational requirement. It is noted that with the current Gaussian mixture implement of ET-PHD filter satisfying tracking performance could only be obtained under linear and Gaussian conditions. To extend the application of ET-PHD filter for nonlinear models, our study has derived a particle implement of ET-PHD (ET-P-PHD) filter. Our study finds that the main factors influencing the computational complexity of the ET-P-PHD filter are the partition number of measurement set and the calculation of non-negative coefficients of cells in partitions. With the pretreatment of measurements and application of a new K-means clustering based measurement set partition method, we have successfully decreased the partition number. In addition, a gating method for target state space, which is based on likelihood relationship between target state and measurement, is proposed to simplify the calculation of non-negative coefficients. Simulation results show that the algorithms proposed by our study could satisfyingly deal with multiple extended target tracking issues under nonlinear conditions, and lead to significantly lower computational complexity with tiny effect on tracking performance.