TRACKING RADAR

position and velocity, assuming small velocity changes between observations, or data samples.
Benedict72 suggests that to minimize the output noise variance at steady state and the transient
response to a maneuvering target as modeled by a ramp function, the a-/} coefficients are related
by /! = <x2/(2 - a). The particular choice of a within the range of zero to one depends upon the
system application, in particular the tracking bandwidth. A compromise usually must be
made between good smoothing of (he random measurement errors (requiring narrow
bandwidth) and rapid response to maneuvering targets (requiring wide bandwidth). Another
criterion for selecting the rx-ft coefficients is based on the best linear track fitted to the radar
dala in a least squares sense. This gives the values of a and fl as11

P
n(n+\) n{n + 1)

where n is the number of the scan or target observation (n > 2).

The standard «-/? tracker docs not handle the maneuvering target. However, an adaptive
«-/! tracker is one which varies the two smoothing parameters to achieve a variable bandwidth
so as lo follow maneuvers. The value of a can be set by observing the measurement error vn
— xm. At t h e start of tracking the bandwidth is made wide and then it narrows down iftlie large!
moves in a straight-line trajectory. As the target maneuvers or turns, the bandwidth is widened to
keep the tracking error small.
The Kalman filter78 is similar to the classical ct-fi tracker except that it inherently provides
for the dynamical or maneuvering target. In the Kalman filter a model for the measure- ' ment
error has to be assumed, as well as a model of the target trajectory and the disturbance or
uncertainty of the trajectory.81 Such disturbances in the trajectory might be due to neglect of
higher-order derivatives in the model of the dynamics, random motions due to atmospheric
turbulence, and deliberate target maneuvers. The Kalman filter can, in principle, utilize a wide
variety of models for measurement noise and trajectory disturbance; however, it is often
assumed that these are described by white noise with zero mean. 75 A maneuvering target does not
always fit such an ideal model, since it is quite likely to produce correlated observations. The
proper inclusion of realistic dynamical models increases the complexity of the calculations.
Also, it is difficult to describe a priori the precise nature of the trajectory disturbances. Some form
of adaptation to maneuvers is required. 76 The Kalman filter is sophisticated and accurate, but is
more costly to implement than the several other methods commonly used for the smoothing and
prediction of tracking data. 77 Its chief advantage over the classical tx-fl tracker is its inherent
ability to take account of maneuver statistics. If, however, the Kalman filter were restricted to
modeling the target trajectory as a straight line and if the measurement noise and the trajectory
disturbance noise were modeled as white, gaussian noise with zero mean, the Kalman filter
equations reduce to the a-f) filter equations with the parameters a and P computed sequentially
by the Kalman filter procedure.
The classical ct-fl tracking filter is relatively easy to implement. To handle the maneuvering
target, some means may be included to detect maneuvers and change the values of a and ji
accordingly. In some radar systems, the data rate might also be increased during target
maneuvers. As the means for choosing a and /? become more sophisticated, the optimal o>0
tracker becomes equivalent to a Kalman filter even fora target trajectory model with error. In
this sense, the optimal aft tracking filter is one in which the values of a and ft require
knowledge of the statistics ofthe measurement errors and the prediction errors, and in which a
and /( are determined in a recursive manner in that they depend on previous estimates of the
mean square error in the smoothed position and velocity. 19
(The above discussion has been in terms of a sampled-data system tracking targets
detected by a surveillance radar. The concept of the a-fi tracker or the Kalman filter also can
 INTRODUCTION TO RADAR SYSTEMS

of pulses expected to be returned from a target as the antenna scans past. The integrated pulses are
compared with a threshold to indicate the presence or absence of a target. An example is the
commonly used moving window detector which examines continuously thejast n samples within
each quantized range interval and announces the presence of a target if m out of n of these
samples cross a preset threshold. (This and other automatic detectors are described in Sec. 10.7
and in Ref. 70.) By locating the center of the n pulses, an estimate of the target's angular
direction can be obtained. This is called beam splitting.
If there is but one target present within the radar's coverage, then detections on two scans
are all that is needed to establish a target track and to estimate its velocity. However, there are
usually other targets as well as clutter echoes present, so that three or more detections are
needed to reliably establish a track without the generation of false or spurious tracks
Although a computer can be programmed to recognize and reject false tracks, too many false
tracks can overload the computer and result in poor information. It is for th i s tame reason of
avoiding computer overload that the radar used with ADT should be designed to exclude
unwanted signals, as from clutter and interference. A good ADT system therefore requires a
radar with a good,MTI and a good CFAR_(constant false alarm rate) receiver. A clutter map,
generated by the radar, is sometimes used to reduce the load on the tracking computer by
blanking clutter areas and removing detections associated with large point clutter sources not
rejected by the MTI. Slowly moving echoes that are not ofinterest can also be removed by the
clutter map. The availability of some distinctive target characteristic, such as its altitude, might
also prove of help when performing track association.71 Thus, the quality of the ADT will
depend significantly on the ability of the radar to reject unwanted signals.
When a new detection is received, an attempt is made to associate it with existing
tracks.96 This is aided by establishing for each track a small search region, or gate, within
which a new detection is predicted based on the estimate of the target speed and direction. It is
desired to make the gate as small as possible so as to avoid having more than one echo fall
within it when the traffic density is high or when two tracks are close to one another. However, a
large gate area is required if the tracker is to follow target turns or maneuvers. More than one
size gate might therefore be used to overcome this dilemma. The size of the small gate would
be determined by the accuracy of the track. When a target does not appear in the small gate, a
larger gate would be used whose search area is determined by the maximum acceleration
expected of the target during turns.
On the basis of the past detections the track-while-scan radar must make a smoothed
estimate of a target's present position and velocity, as well as a predicted position and velocity
One method for computing this information is the so-called a-/! tracker (also called the g-h
tracker84), which computes the present smoothed target position x n and velocity i by the
following equations12
Smoothed position: xn = xpn +• oc(x, - xpn) (5 H)

Smoothed velocity: xn = xo_ , + y (xn - xpn) (5.9)

where xpn = predicted position of the target at the nth scan, x, = measured position at the nth
scan, a. = position smoothing parameter, jl = velocity smoothing parameter, and T, = time
between observations. The predicted position at the n + 1st scan is xH + xn T,. (When acceleration
is important a third equation can be added to describe an <x -0-y tracker, where y =
acceleration smoothing parameter.)73 For a = /} = 0, the tracker uses no current information,
only the smoothed data of prior observations. I f a = II - 1, no smoothing is included at all. The
classical a-p filter is designed to minimize the mean square error in the smoothed (filtered)