Integrated track initialization and maintenance in heavy clutter using probabilistic data association

• A PDA-based multitarget tracker in heavy clutter environment is proposed.
• The new approach can automatically the initialize and maintain the tracks.
• The new approach does not require the number of targets in advance.
• The JML-PDA is extended to the scenario of arbitrary number of targets.
• CRLB is derived to evaluate the performance of the estimation.

Target tracking in high clutter or low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) environments is an important topic and still a challenging task. Joint Maximum Likelihood Probabilistic Data Association (JML-PDA) is a well-known batch method for initializing the tracks of very low observable (VLO) targets in heavy clutter environments. On the other hand, the Joint Probabilistic Data Association (JPDA) algorithm, which is commonly used for recursive track maintenance, lacks track initialization capability. In this paper, we propose a Combined JML-PDA and JPDA (CJML-PDA) algorithm to automatically initialize and maintain the tracks. This combined approach seamlessly shares information between the initialization and maintenance stages of the tracker. In contrast, in other batch-recursive approaches the initialization and maintenance algorithms operate rather independent of each other. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated on a heavy clutter scenario and its performance is tested on closely-spaced (but resolved) targets with association ambiguity using angle-only measurements.