A sequential extension of the unified MAP track estimation method

A maximum a-posteriori (MAP) estimator for multitarget tracking based on sensor array data has been derived for temporally uncorrelated signals and uncorrelated contact tracks. This batch estimator is an iterative algorithm employing a nested pair of expectation maximization (EM) based algorithms. The 'hidden data' are direction-of-arrival estimates of synthetic signal estimates, each conditioned on prior track distributions. In this paper, the batch method is extended to operate in a sequential manner by defining a moving batch window and stride for processing the incoming data. Comparisons to the full batch method are presented and discussed.