In this paper we present a novel procedure for multi-frame detection in radar systems. The proposed architecture consists of a pre-processing stage, which extracts a set of candidate alarms (or plots) from the raw data measurements (e.g., this can be the Detector and Plot-Extractor of common radar systems), and a track-before-detect (TBD) processor, which jointly elaborates observations from multiple scans (or frames) and confirms reliable plots. A computationally efficient dynamic programming algorithm for the TBD processor is derived, which does not require a discretization of the state space and operates directly on the input plot-lists. Finally, a simple algorithm to solve possible data association problems arising at the track-formation step is given, and a thorough complexity and performance analysis is provided, showing that large detection gains with respect to the standard radar processing are achievable with negligible complexity increase.
A novel dynamic programming algorithm for track-before-detect in radar systems
GROSSI, Emanuele;LOPS, Marco;VENTURINO, Luca
2013-01-01
Abstract
In this paper we present a novel procedure for multi-frame detection in radar systems. The proposed architecture consists of a pre-processing stage, which extracts a set of candidate alarms (or plots) from the raw data measurements (e.g., this can be the Detector and Plot-Extractor of common radar systems), and a track-before-detect (TBD) processor, which jointly elaborates observations from multiple scans (or frames) and confirms reliable plots. A computationally efficient dynamic programming algorithm for the TBD processor is derived, which does not require a discretization of the state space and operates directly on the input plot-lists. Finally, a simple algorithm to solve possible data association problems arising at the track-formation step is given, and a thorough complexity and performance analysis is provided, showing that large detection gains with respect to the standard radar processing are achievable with negligible complexity increase.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.