Sectoring Approach for Performance Enhancement of MTT and Its Application on JPDA Algorithm

Recent advancements in multi-target tracking (MTT) technologies and algorithms have led to improved accuracy and efficiency in tracking multiple objects in dynamic environments. However, as the number of targets increases, MTT methods often struggle with computational demands and tracking capacity. This paper presents a novel sectoring approach on the Joint Probabilistic Data Association (JPDA) algorithm to enhance its tracking performance in MTT scenarios. The sectoring method divides the tracking area into distinct sectors and assigns a separate JPDA tracker for each sector, yielding two primary benefits in environments with large numbers of targets. First, it increases the capacity of the JPDA tracker to handle a larger number of targets. Second, it reduces computational complexity when tracking a high number of targets. On the other hand, the approach introduces a trade-off by slightly increasing computational complexity in scenarios with fewer targets. Experimental results were obtained through simulations of 10 different scenarios, each with 37 varying numbers of targets and three different sector configurations, amounting to a total of 1110 simulations. The findings demonstrate that the sectoring approach achieves up to a 95% reduction in computational complexity and increases the number of tracked targets from 24 to 40 in randomly generated scenarios. Results also revealed that the effects of the sectoring approach become more pronounced as the number of sectors increases.