Joint probabilistic data association tracker for extended target tracking applied to X-band marine radar data

Abstract

X-band marine radar systems are flexible and low-cost tools for monitoring multiple targets in a surveillance area. Although they may suffer from several sources of interference, e.g., sea clutter, they can provide high-resolution measurements in both space and time. Such features offer the opportunity to get accurate information not only about the target kinematics, i.e., positions and velocities, as other conventional radars, but also about the targets' extents. This research area is named extended target tracking (ETT). In this paper, we propose a signal processing chain composed by a detector and a joint probabilistic data association (JPDA) tracker to handle the problem of multiple ETT and to jointly estimate both the targets' kinematics and their sizes, i.e., length and width. The performance assessment is conducted on real data acquired by an X-band marine radar located in the Gulf of La Spezia, Italy. The experimental results demonstrate the ability of the processing chain to reach high performance with a limited computational burden.