View article

The aim of the present report is to compare the performance of various manoeuvring tracking algorithms on simulated data in order to select the most promising technique or techniques for inclusion in the the Viterbi Data Association (VDA) tracker for over-the-horizon radar (OTHR). The criteria used to determine the suitability of a manoeuvring target tracking technique are:(1) compatibility with the existing VDA tracker framework;(2) ability to detect the onset of a manoeuvre; and (3) ability to maintain track on a manoeuvring target with acceptable average tracking errors.

The VDA tracker uses a one-to-one association of measurements to tracks. Methods, such as the Interactive Multiple Model algorithm [6], which produce an averaged track based on probabilistic measurement-to-track assignments, are incompatible with the VDA framework. This first criterion was addressed in a previous report [8] which surveyed existing manoeuvring target tracking methods and identified a number of techniques which could potentially be incorporated into the VDA tracker. The previous report also provided an initial assessment of the feasibility of existing manoeuvring target techniques for OTHR tracking.