Sequential Multi-Sensor JPDA for Target Tracking in Passive Multi-Static Radar With Range and Doppler Measurements

Target tracking in passive multi-static radar (PMSR) with bistatic range and Doppler frequency measurements from multiple transmit-receive pairs is gaining increasing interest. For the data association problem in this scenario, the parallel architecture of a multi-sensor joint probabilistic data association (P-MSJPDA) filter has been significantly investigated. As an alternative architecture, the sequential MSJPDA (S-MSJPDA) is rarely discussed in PMSR. In this paper, we evaluate the behaviors of S-MSJPDA in PMSR target tracking with bistatic range and Doppler frequency measurements. A comprehensive comparison between the S-MSJPDA and the P-MSJPDA in PMSR is provided. It can be found from the analysis that S-MSJPDA outperforms its parallel counterpart in terms of computational efficiency, given an acceptable degradation in position accuracy. The S-MSJPDA is further applied to an experimental passive multi-static radar for aircrafts tracking. The real data results obtained are rather close to the true trajectories of the targets. This demonstrates that the S-MSJPDA has great potentials in PMSR target tracking.