A modified track-before-detect algorithm for radar weak target

Track-Before-Detect (TBD) is an effective method for detection weak target. In TBD a doubted target is tracked through a time sequence of frames, and then the target's energy is integrated along the tracked trajectory to lead to detection. Therefore the key of TBD methodology is how to accurate tracking target. A novel TBD algorithm is proposed based on Modified Hough Transform (MHT) and Particle Filter (PF). Firstly trajectories that are possible true target path are initiated by the MHT to obtain the region of the target, after that, this region is provided to the PF as the prior knowledge. According to this prior knowledge the false trajectories are eliminated and target is detected by the PF. Simulation results show the proposed algorithm can detect and track the weak target as low as 3 dB SNR.