Group Target Track Initiation Method Aided by Echo Amplitude Information

Track initiation is the first important step in group target tracking, and it has a direct effect on the quality of the overall procedure. Traditional radar target tracking methods only utilize information about the target position to detect group numbers, but they do not use information relating to echo amplitude. Tracks are thus easily lost, as the numbers of detected groups and equivalent measurements are inaccurate. This paper proposes a group target track initiation method aided by echo amplitude information to ameliorate these problems. In this respect, target position and echo amplitude information is used to detect the number of target groups, and equivalent measurements are then computed using amplitude weighting and position weighting. Echo amplitude information is employed in the step of detecting group target numbers and computing the equivalent measurements, and group target tracks are subsequently initialized using the modified logic method. The proposed method can be used to correctly detect the number of target groups when the number is previously unknown. Furthermore, the method reduces the rate of track loss and improves the performance of group target tracking. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated by the simulation results.