Track Quality Based Multitarget Tracking Approach for Global Nearest-Neighbor Association

In multitarget tracking, in addition to the problem of measurement-to-track association, there are decision problems related to track confirmation and termination. In general, such decisions are taken based on the total number of measurement associations, length of no association sequence, and total lifetime of the track in question. For a better utilization of available information, confidence of the tracker on a particular track can be used. This quantity can be computed using the measurement-to-track association likelihoods corresponding to the particular track, target detection probability for the sensor-target geometry, and false alarm density. A track quality measure is proposed here for assignment-based global nearest neighbor (GNN) trackers. It can be noted that to compute track quality measure for assignment-based data association one needs to consider different detection events than those considered for computation of the track quality measures available in the literature, which are designed for probabilistic data association (PDA) based trackers. In addition to the proposed track quality measure, a multitarget tracker based on it is developed, which is particularly suitable in scenarios with temporarily undetectable targets. In this work, tracks are divided into three sets based on their quality and measurement association history: initial tracks, confirmed tracks, and unobservable tracks. Details of the update procedures of the three track sets are provided. The results show that discriminating tracks on the basis of their track quality can lead to longer track life while decreasing the average false track length.