Dynamic programming track-before-detect algorithm based on exponential smoothing method

Accounting for the issues of bad tracking performance and agglomeration phenomenon of conventional dynamic programming track-before-detect (DP-TBD) algorithm in low signal to noise ratio(SNR) situation, a DP-TBD algorithm based on exponential smoothing method is proposed in this paper. The innovation lies in an algorithm that the merit function in search window at previous frame is weighted with the predicted target state which is obtained by exponential smoothing method while the merit function at current frame is optimized. Simulation results indicate that the proposed algorithm can mitigate the agglomeration phenomenon efficiently and has better detection and tracking performance over the conventional algorithm. Furthermore, the lower the SNR is, the greater the improvement will be. Therefore, the proposed algorithm is more applicable in the low SNR environment than the conventional ones.