A study of factors affecting multiple target tracking with a pixelized sensor

Factors affecting the performance of an algorithm for tracking multiple targets observed using a pixelized sensor are studied. A pixelized sensor divides the surveillance region into a grid of cells with targets generating returns on the grid according to some known probabilistic model. In previous work an efficient particle filtering algorithm was developed for multiple target tracking using such a sensor. This algorithm is the focus of the study. The performance of the algorithm is affected by several considerations. The pixelized sensor model can be used with either thresholded or non-thresholded measurements. While it is known that information is lost when measurements are thresholded, quantitative results have not been established. The development of a tractable algorithm requires that closely-spaced targets are processed jointly while targets which are far apart are processed separately. Selection of the clustering distance involves a trade-off between performance and computational expense. A final issue concerns the computation of the proposal density used in the particle filter. Variations in a certain parameter enable a trade-off between performance and computational expense. The various issues are studied using a mixture of theoretical results and Monte Carlo simulations.

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