Signal Processing in Radar Systems

5  Filtering and Extrapolation of Target Track Parameters Based on Radar Measure

A track represents the belief that a physical object or target is present and has actually been detected by the complex radar system (CRS). An automatic radar-tracking subsystem forms a track when enough radar detections are made in a believable enough pattern to indicate that a target is actually present (as opposed to a succession of false alarms) and when enough time has passed to allow accurate calculation of the target’s kinematics state—usually the target position and velocity. Thus, a goal of tracking is to transform a time-lapse detection picture, consisting of target detections, false alarms, and clutter, into a track picture, consisting of tracks on real ...