Surveillance radar range-bearing centroid processing

In non-monopulse mechanically scanned surveillance radars, each target can be detected multiple times as the beam is scanned across the target. To prevent redundant reports of the object, a centroid processing algorithm is used to associate and cluster the multiple detections, called primitives, into a single object measurement. This paper reviews several techniques for centroid processing, and presents a new center of mass algorithm that is implemented with the recursive least squares algorithm. The new algorithm has a unique gating process to enable the primitive measurement association. Simulation results of the new algorithm are reported. Multiple object merged measurement handling issues within the centroid processing context are discussed.