A Track Before Detect Approach for Extended Objects

This paper deals with target tracking for extended objects in a track before detect context. In the scope of this paper a target is called extended if its physical size is large enough to occupy multiple (radar) resolution cells, e.g. in range and/or azimuth. We show how the existing track before detect approach can be amended in order to deal with extended targets. The algorithm, that we propose, will jointly estimate on-line both the standard kinematic parameters of the target, i.e. position and velocity, as well as the size or extent of the target. The estimation is performed by means of a particle filter. It is shown that the extended target approach is significantly superior in terms of performance to a point target approach in case the target is extended