Extended target tracking applied to X-band radar data

Abstract

X-band marine radar systems are flexible and low-cost tools for monitoring multiple targets in a surveillance area. They are able to provide high resolution measurements in both space and time. Such features offer the opportunity to get accurate information not only about the targets' kinematics but also about the targets' extents. The tracking of these kinds of data is usually called extended target tracking (ETT). In this paper, we propose a signal processing chain mainly composed by a pixel-wise detector and a joint probabilistic data association tracker to handle the problem of multiple ETT. 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 that the processing chain is able to reach high performance with a limited computational burden.