Decision directed multitarget tracking

Multitarget tracking problems arise in situations where the intertarget distances are of the same order of magnitude as the variance of the targets' estimated positions. In a network of surveillance sensors, where each sensor "pretracks" the multitarget data, the problem replicates itself at the point where fusion of data from all sources is carried out. This paper discusses such problems from the standpoint of a specific algorithm and a specific situation: decision directed multitarget tracking as applied to multisensor ocean surveil-Iance.