Abstract:

An improved track-before-detect (TBD) algorithm based on the particle filter is proposed for high-speed weak target detection. This method uses a unique measurement model for radar range-Doppler compression, which can effectively reduce the model error of the traditional sensor point spread function. An updating strategy is proposed that newborn particles are uniformly distributed within the set with highintensity bins and that the existing particles with low weights are replaced by new particles with probability. This strategy can improve the diversity among the particles and mitigate the effects of degeneracy. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm has an improved performance of detecting and tracking dim targets compared with the standard particle filter.