80 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON FUZZY SYSTEMS, VOL. 5, NO.

1, FEBRUARY 1997

Radar Tracking for Air Surveillance in a Stressful

Environment Using a Fuzzy-Gain Filter
Keith C. C. Chan, Member, IEEE, Vika Lee, and Henry Leung, Member, IEEE

Abstract—In this paper, we present a fuzzy-gain filter for target
tracking in a stressful environment where a target may accelerate
at nonuniform rates and may also complete sharp turns within a
short time period. Furthermore, the target may be missing from
successive scans even during the turns, and its positions may be
detected erroneously. The proposed tracker incorporates fuzzy
target dynamics. Many Kalman filter-based algorithms that are
developed to track maneuvering targets are, for example, of
such nature. They make assumptions about (process noise),
(system noise) and (measurement noise) [1], [5], [6], [11].
Some of them also make assumptions of constant velocity
logic in a conventional - filter by the use of a set of fuzzy if-then and acceleration [2]–[6], [8], [10]. Some require that the
rules. Given the error and change of error in the last prediction, duration between scans (the data sampling interval) be small
these rules are used to determine the magnitude of  and :
The proposed tracker has the advantage that it does not require
any assumption of statistical models of process and measurement
noise and of target dynamics. Furthermore, it does not need a
maneuver detector even when tracking maneuvering targets. The
performance of the fuzzy tracker is evaluated using real radar
tracking data generated from F-18 and other fighters, collected
jointly by the defense departments of Canada and the United
States When compared against that of a conventional tracking
algorithm based on a two-stage Kalman filter, its performance is
found to be better both in terms of prediction accuracy and the
ability to minimize the number of track losses.
Index Terms—Fuzzy filter, fuzzy logic, fuzzy rules, fuzzy track-
ing.
I. INTRODUCTION
T ARGET tracking is the prediction of the future trajectory
of an object based on its past states. How accurate
predictions can be made, therefore, depends on how accurate
a target’s past and present positions can be measured. Unfor-
tunately, due to clutter and other limitations of the sensors
and the signal processing algorithms, the positions of a target
cannot be measured with perfect accuracy. The measurements
can exhibit different random characteristics, and they can be
biased depending on a target’s angle of flight and its relative
position to the radar. Furthermore, the fact that a target such as
a military aircraft may thrust, yaw, pitch, and roll, and that it
may deviate from a constant velocity trajectory due to aircraft
control and turbulence, making target tracking all the more
difficult.
To cope with these problems many methods have been
developed. These methods are by and large model based.
They are usually developed under various assumptions about
statistical models of process and measurement noise and about
Manuscript received August 15, 1995; revised April 15, 1996.
K. C. C. Chan and V. Lee are with the Department of Computing, The
Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
H. Leung is with the Surface Radar Section, Radar Division, Defense
Research Establishment Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, K1A 0K2, Canada.
Publisher Item Identifier S 1063-6706(97)00040-4.
1063–6706/97$10.00  1997 IEEE
[2]–[3], [5]–[7], [9]–[10]. And some require the probability of
detection be either unity or independent in successive scans
[1]–[10].
It is, perhaps, because of the validity of these assumptions
that many sophisticated model-based tracking algorithms have
not shown markedly improved performance over those based
on the simple fixed-gain - filter [12]. The - trackers are
still quite well received in the tracking community despite
the fact that they have their own limitations. For example, al-
though the optimality regions are known, the exact magnitude
of and are often hard to determine. Different - trackers
with different ’s and ’s may have to be used in response to
acceleration or deceleration or before, during, and after a turn.
Furthermore, to cope with maneuvering a maneuver detector is
often required in conjunction with an - tracker. In addition
to and therefore, there is also the need to decide when
the maneuver detector should be triggered.
These decisions can be very difficult in the case where the
targets being tracked have high dynamics (e.g., military aircraft
such as F-18’s). These targets may move undetected for several
successive scans when they make sharp turns. In such cases,
the time delay (typically of at least several scans) associated
with the use of a maneuver detector will very likely result in
track losses. By the time a target is detected to be making
a turn, it would have already completed before the tracker is
able to respond.
To overcome the problems associated with target tracking
in a stressful environment where a target may: i) accelerate
or decelerate at nonuniform rates any time during its course,
ii) perform sharp turns (i.e., high-alpha maneuvers) within a
short time period (say, within 3–4 scans), iii) not be detected in
successive scans (i.e., missing observations) during the turns
or anywhere else along the track, iv) the target’s positions
inaccurately measured or detected to the extent of over 100%
deviation in the opposite direction from the real position, we
propose a tracking method based on a fuzzy-gain filter. This
method incorporates fuzzy logic in a conventional - filter by
the use of a set of fuzzy if-then rules. Given the position error
and change-of-error in the last prediction, these rules are used
CHAN et al.: RADAR TRACKING FOR AIR SURVEILLANCE IN A STRESSFUL ENVIRONMENT
to determine the smoothing gains of and when making
the next prediction.
Based on the - filter, the proposed fuzzy tracker has,
on one hand, the advantages which a typical - tracker
has as well (i.e., it does not require any assumptions about
noise models or target dynamics and is simple and relatively
fast). On the other hand, the fuzzy tracker does not suffer
from the same limitations. It is capable of quickly adjusting
the magnitude of and in response to changes in speed
and direction without a maneuver or an acceleration detector,
and for this reason the proposed tracker is able to eliminate
any delay. Also, with fuzzy inference it can make better
decisions by taking into consideration several different or even
conflicting situations at the same time. As a result, it can
minimize the number of false alarms even if the data sampling
interval is relatively long, and a target is not detected during
the turns.
The performance of many model-based tracking methods
are often evaluated using simulated data. Their usefulness
in real-tracking environment which usually depart from ideal
is, therefore, questionable. To better evaluate the practicality
of the proposed fuzzy tracker, we used several sets of real-
life radar tracking data collected by the joint effort of the
defense departments of Canada and the United States. The
data sets consist of tracks generated by F-18 and other fighters.
Using a two-stage Kalman filter as benchmark, we evaluated
the performance of the proposed fuzzy tracker. Experimental
results show that it is more robust in terms of its ability to
prevent track losses and minimize prediction error.
II. THE - TRACKER
The - tracker is probably the most extensively applied
fixed-coefficient filter. This filter can be defined by the fol-
lowing equations [12]:
(1)
(2)
(3)
where is the coordinate of the target’s observed
position at the th scan, is the coordinate of the
target’s predicted position at the th scan, is the
coordinate of the smoothed target position at the th scan,
is the smoothed target velocity in the direction at the
th scan, is the radar scan time or the sampling interval, and
are the fixed-coefficient filter parameters. The quantity
is normally defined to be unity, but in the case of missing
observations, its value may be taken as the number of scans
since the last measurement.
The usual initialization process for an - tracker is defined
by
(4)
(5)
(6)
81
Equations (1)-(3) are used directly when an observation is
received on scan However, in the case where the probability
of detection is less than unity, there may be scans for which a
target is not detected. Then, the smoothed position is set equal
to the prediction as follows:
(7)
(8)
This effectively amounts to setting The
prediction for the next scan is computed as before.
The predicted target position is simply a linear extrapolation
from the previous smoothed position with a constant velocity.
The smoothing in an - filter is performed in each coor-
dinate separately. In other words, (1)–(8) are also generalized
to the coordinate as follows:
(9)
(10)
(11)
(12)
(13)
(14)
(15)
(16)
where is the coordinate of the target’s observed
position at the th scan, is the coordinate of the target’s
predicted position at the th scan, is the coordinate of
the smoothed target position at the th scan, and is the
smoothed target velocity in the direction at the th scan.
The range of smoothing gains and can be obtained from
the characteristic equation of the filter, i.e.,
Applying the jury’s test yields the stability region
which provides admissible , values [12], [13]
and and (17)
While the stability region is known, it may not always be easy
for the exact and to be determined. If the coefficients are
too small, the filters have good noise reduction ratio but can
be too unresponsive to dynamic targets. If the coefficients are
too large, the filters have good following capabilities but can
be too sensitive to noise. In the case of a target moving in
a straight line with constant velocity in a relatively nonnoisy
environment, it may be easy for some fixed and to be
determined; but in the case a target moving in a relatively noisy
environment and its flight dynamics continuously changing,
the coefficients cannot be fixed. Decisions as to what and
should be cannot be easily made. At some points during the
course, they may need to be set relatively large, but at some
other points they need to be set relatively small. For example,
if a target deviates from a straight path and is maneuvering, the
coefficients should be set relatively large to make sure that the
tracker follows the target closely. However, if the deviation
is due to measurement noise or detection error rather than the
82 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON FUZZY SYSTEMS, VOL. 5, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 1997

target maneuvering, and should be set relatively small so and

as to make sure that the tracker stays on the right track.
In other words, therefore, when a target is detected to deviate
from a straight line path, and can be set either large
or small depending on whether the deviation is due to noise If
or maneuvering. To avoid false alarms on one hand while
following a maneuvering target closely on the other, decisions
regarding the choice of and cannot be made based on If
binary logic. Decision boundaries, instead, have to be fuzzy so
that the chance of track losses can be reduced to a minimum by If
reducing the transient magnitude caused by an abrupt change
of decisions. (21)

III. THE FUZZY-GAIN FILTER

and their values lie in Based on and ,
To define fuzzy decision boundaries for target tracking in a and can be defined as follows:
stressful environment, in this section we describe a fuzzy-gain
filter that is characterized by a set of fuzzy rules. Based on
the error and change of error in the last prediction, these rules
determine what magnitude and in an - filter should be If
set to when making the next prediction. Any change in target
dynamics or the tracking environment will, therefore, result in
changes in and If

A. System Variables If
The rules of the proposed fuzzy filter are expressed in
terms of two input variables and two output variables. The (22)
input variables and are defined in terms of the
prediction error and change of error at the th and
scan where
(18)
and If
(19)
and and If
The range of values for and
for are dependent on how
large the deviation can be between the measured and predicted If
positions of the target at the th scan. and
can theoretically be zero and and can (23)
be much greater than the maximum velocity of the target.
Since different targets have different velocity, the magnitude As a result, we define and to be
of and may vary from target to target. To
design a general fuzzy tracker which can be used with different
types of targets, we normalize the and components of (24)
and so that instead of and , we compute
and where
and

If
(25)

If
The universe of discourse and, hence, the range of values
which and each may take is in the interval [0,
If 1] regardless of the target types and their maximum velocity.
Values of and that fall into this range represent
(20) crisp values of and
CHAN et al.: RADAR TRACKING FOR AIR SURVEILLANCE IN A STRESSFUL ENVIRONMENT 83

Fig. 1. Membership functions for the fuzzy sets of E (k) and 1E (k):
0 0
Fig. 2. Membership functions for the fuzzy sets of  and :
TABLE I
B. Membership Functions
FUZZY ASSOCIATIONS FOR (k)
The crisp values are mapped into some fuzzy sets defined in
the universe of discourse of and These fuzzy
sets are labeled in the linguistic terms of zero (ZE), small pos-
itive (SP), medium positive (MP), and large positive (LP). The
specific membership function for each fuzzy set determines the
meaning of these linguistic terms. These membership functions
are defined on the underlying universe of discourse of
and by the trapezoidal functions shown in Fig. 1. The TABLE II
grades of membership are assigned to different values of FUZZY ASSOCIATIONS FOR  (k)
and based on these functions.
In determining the membership functions of each of these
fuzzy sets, we decided that the core of ZE be in [0.0, 0.1],
that of SP be in [0.3, 0.4], that of MP be in [0.6, 0.7] and that
of ZE be in [0.9, 1.0]. The intervals between the cores of the
fuzzy sets (which are all of equal width) are made boundaries
of them. Such choice of membership functions ensures that
the chance of each input data point falling into each fuzzy set universe of discourse in the sense that they are much faster
be roughly equal, and that the probability of each fuzzy rule in deciding what fuzzy values and should take on given
being fired is, as a result, more or less the same. specific values for and
While the antecedents of the fuzzy rules are made up of
and , their consequences are expressed in terms C. The Fuzzy Rules
of and where and are the coefficients of With the input and output variables defined above, the fuzzy
the proposed fuzzy - filter at the th scan. Even though, rules can be expressed as follows:
theoretically, and can take on a wide range of
IF AND
values, it is seldom necessary in practice. For the proposed
tracker, the universe of discourse for both coefficients are THEN AND
taken to be [0, 1]. where and are fuzzy sets defined in the universe
The fuzzy sets for both and are labeled in the of discourse of , and , respectively.
linguistic terms of ZE, SP, MP, LP, very large positive (VP), Since every such rule used by the proposed fuzzy tracker
and extremely large positive (EP). The specific membership can be considered as an implication that defines a fuzzy
function for each fuzzy set determines the meaning of the association, they are concisely written as a linguistic map or
linguistic terms and is defined on the underlying universe of fuzzy associative memory here, as shown in Tables I and II.
discourse of and by the triangular functions shown Each entry in the table associates input fuzzy sets with output
in Fig. 2. fuzzy sets and some proper and can be inferred for any
Unlike that of and the universe of discourse input in the universe of discourse.
is divided up into six instead of four fuzzy sets, and the core The rules (i.e., the table entries) were obtained by inter-
of these fuzzy sets are not equally spaced. The central region viewing some defense experts. Three interview sessions were
is more finely divided into four different fuzzy sets, SP, MP, conducted initially. The first two (which took about an hour
LP, and VP. This is because the region for optimum is each) involved two different individuals. Even though they
found more often in [0.3, 0.8] on one hand [2], [17], [18], were interviewed separately, the rules obtained were rather
and the movement of the tracker needs to be made relatively consistent. This is especially true with the more extreme cases
small to avoid false alarms on the other. Furthermore, when involving ZE’s and LP’s in the case of and ,
interviewing defense experts to obtain the fuzzy rules, they and ZE’s and EP’s in the case of and To resolve
seem to be more comfortable with such partitioning of the conflict, an extra session with both defense experts present
84
were held. After about two hours of discussions (including
one of the authors presenting the idea about a fuzzy-gain filter)
some consensus was concluded. To ensure that the best set of
fuzzy rules be obtained, both experts suggested testing the
rules against some simulated data. After many iterations of
trials and errors with a number of consultative sessions held
with these experts, a set of fuzzy rules was finalized. These
rules are able to trigger the best response to accommodate
all flight patterns and dynamics including acceleration and
deceleration, maneuvering, missing detection, and noisy data
points. The finalized set of fuzzy associations (i.e., the entries
in the above tables) exhibit the following characteristics.
• The diagonal entries from the bottom left-hand corner in
both tables (except the one at the top right-hand corner)
are set to VP and ZE, respectively. These entries are
mainly used to handle cases involving gentle maneuver.
With VP and ZE, the tracker can move
very close to a target without resetting the estimated
velocity. Since it takes relatively long to adapt to a new
velocity model, modification of is minimized as much
as possible to avoid false alarm. The value of can
remain more-or-less the same until the deviated point is
confirmed to represent a real gentle maneuver or some
significant change of flight dynamics.
• Entries in the top right-hand corner are usually used for
track reinitiation after track losses. In such cases, setting
both and to EP could greatly speed up the learning
of the new target dynamics.
• Entries in the top left-hand corner are usually used to
deal with missing observations. By setting both and
to VP, the tracker can update the target dynamics after
observations reappear.
• Other entries in the first column handle cases when the
last predictions are accurate. While should be kept large
so as to closely follow the target and prepare for the
tracking of any sudden maneuver, is set to ZE to avoid
changing the predicted velocity by too much. This should
prevent false alarms resulting from noisy observations
from occurring.
• The second and third entries in the first row are used to
handle smooth maneuvering. In such cases, the tracker
needs to make a small change in velocity and a large
change in position so as to closely follow the target.
• Entries in the second row are responsible for relatively
small changes of prediction error. This could happen as
a result of a noisy observation or a target beginning to
maneuver. In the case of target maneuvering, the velocity
of the tracker does not need to be changed much (since
maneuvering is only at its initial stage). In the other case
when deviation is due to noisy observations, change in
velocity should be prevented. Hence, is set to ZE.
• The four entries at the bottom right region of the tables
are used to handle stressful cases involving forward
acceleration, maneuver and/or noise. In these cases,
and should be set neither too large nor too small.
• Invocation of entries in the bottom right-hand corner may
indicate a potential track loss. This may be due to an ac-
cumulated effect of mistaken actions or a sudden change
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON FUZZY SYSTEMS, VOL. 5, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 1997
of target dynamics. In this case, an “over prediction” of
the target position based on the current trend is made. If
the guess of flight direction is correct, the tracker should
recover immediately.
IV. PERFORMANCE EVALUATION
To evaluate the performance of our fuzzy tracker, several
sets of real data collected jointly by the defense departments
of Canada and the United States were used [14]. The data were
gathered in tracking experiments that took place at Canadian
Forces Base, Cold Lake, Alberta. Several F-18 fighter aircraft
flying in prescribed routes served as “raid” targets. Radar data
were recorded simultaneously from the AN/FPN-504 air traffic
control (ATC) radar and the AN/FPS-508 air defense radar
nearby, using two multichannel analog tape recorders provided
by the U.S. Air Force. The radar has a frequency of 1300
MHz. Its scanning rate is 10 s. The probability of detection
for a target is roughly 0.8 and, hence, missed detection may
occur even for straight-line flight patterns. The beam width of
the radar is 2 . Therefore, the radar may not resolve closely
spaced targets when they are performing maneuvers, and some
targets will miss many measurements. The flying time was
about one half hour. The altitude was 20 000 ft and the speed
was 500 knots. Rates of turn ranged from 1–6 g (i.e., the
full range). The identify friend or foe (IFF) system was used
to provide identity (ID) information about the targets. In the
tracking study, the ID is used to distinguish between different
fighters. Only the primary radar plot position information is
used for tracking.
A. A Two-Stage Kalman Tracker
As benchmark, the performance of the fuzzy tracker is
compared against a two-stage estimator which consists of two
separate Kalman filters. The first of which is a steady-gain
Kalman filter with reduced state model. It takes care of the
case when a target moves in a rather straight line with a more
or less constant velocity. The second filter is a Kalman filter
with maneuver model. It takes care of cases when a target
maneuvers or accelerates rapidly. The first filter is switched
on initially and, whenever maneuvering is detected; the second
filter is triggered. In more detail, these filters are characterized
by the following equations:
(26)
(27)
(28)
where is the target state vector, is the measurement vector,
is the transition matrix, is the process noise
matrix at the th scan based on the th scan, is
the gains at the th scan, is the system noise covariance
matrix, and is the measurement matrix with measurement
noise covariance, It should be noted that the symbols
used to represent the target state vector and the measurement
vector are very similar to those of the and coordinate of
CHAN et al.: RADAR TRACKING FOR AIR SURVEILLANCE IN A STRESSFUL ENVIRONMENT
TABLE III
THE MEAN SQUARE PREDICTION ERROR FOR BOTH FUZZY
THE NUMBER OF TRACK LOSES
a measured or predicted position used in Sections II and III,
but they are not related. They are used here mainly because
they have been in widespread use in the field.
For the tracking data, the average velocity of the targets
being tracked is 0.2 nautical miles per second and the sampling
period is 10 s. The average displacement is therefore
nautical miles. Initially, and (the velocity)
are set to zero. For the reduced-state model, the parameters
for (26)–(28) are, therefore, set as follows:
For the maneuver model proposed in [11] to be able to track
targets capable of maximum acceleration of 6 g, has to be
set to 2 g, and has to be set to 50 s. As a result, we have
the following parameter settings:
B. Results and Discussions
Using the real data sets described at the beginning of this
section, the performance of the proposed fuzzy tracker and
85
AND KALMAN TRACKERS
TABLE IV
FOR BOTH FUZZY AND KALMAN TRACKERS
the two-stage Kalman tracker was evaluated based on i) the
number of track losses (which is an indication of the overall
reliability and robustness of the trackers) and ii) the mean-
square prediction error (which is an indication of the trackers’
ability to closely follow the targets). How soon the trackers
were able to recover from incorrect actions and how the initial
settings of the filter parameters affect the performance of the
trackers were also investigated. The results are presented and
discussed in the rest of this section.
In Tables III and IV, we show the mean-square prediction
errors and the number of track losses, respectively, for both
the fuzzy and the Kalman trackers as we vary the gate size
from 0.10 to 0.15 to 0.22, and then to 0.30 nautical miles.
As shown in these tables, the two-stage Kalman tracker did
not perform as well as the fuzzy tracker, both in terms of its
ability to prevent track losses and to closely follow the targets.
The differences in performance are particularly significant as
we reduce the gate size. For the fuzzy tracker, the number
of track losses increased from 6 to 9 to 18, and then to 57
as the gate size is reduced from 0.30 to 0.22 to 0.15, and
then to 0.10, respectively. However, for the Kalman tracker
the reduction of gate size has a much larger impact on its
performance. The number of track losses increased from 27 to
63 to 112, and then to 148 as the gate size is reduced from 0.30
to 0.22 to 0.15, and then to 0.10, respectively. The difference
between the two trackers in the increase of the mean-square
prediction error is also rather significant. In the case of the
Kalman tracker, there is a large 16.3% increase as the gate
size is reduced. However, in the case of the proposed fuzzy
tracker, the increase is a mere 4.3%. From Table III, one could
86 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON FUZZY SYSTEMS, VOL. 5, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 1997

Fig. 3. Performance of fuzzy tracker in a very stressful environment. Fig. 4. Performance of Kalman tracker in a very stressful environment.

see that different noise level had been used for testing of the
robustness of both the fuzzy and the Kalman tracker.
It should also be noted from Table IV, that the deterioration
in the performance of the Kalman tracker was quite drastic
in some cases. For example, it lost track of target 130A only
once—when the gate size was 0.30. However, when the gate
size was reduced to 0.22, it lost track of 130A ten times. Close
examination of the data reveals that the main reason for this
sudden jump in errors is that the Kalman tracker is rather slow
to recover from incorrect actions. The track formed by 130A
contains a gentle maneuver. When the gate size is relatively
large, the Kalman tracker was able to keep track of the target,
but when we reduce the gate size, the Kalman tracker lost
track of it right at the beginning of the maneuver. Once it
lost the target, the Kalman tracker took a rather long time to
recover from its mistakes since Kalman filter require a rather
long learning period before it enters a steady state (i.e., stable
and reliable prediction). On the contrary, the fuzzy tracker was Fig. 5. Performance of fuzzy tracker in a rather nonstressful environment.
able to recover from incorrect decisions much more quickly
and this explains the rather large difference in the number of at least several scans) required for a maneuver detector to
track losses. respond to it. Since the target made a 360 turn in an interval
For better understanding of the differences in performance of six scans, a delay of two scans could mean an angular
of the two trackers, we have extracted some sessions of the deviation of about 120 Thus, it is not surprising for the two-
tracks from the real data sets for illustration and discussion stage Kalman tracker to “overshoot” when predicting the next
here. Figs. 3–10 show the actual and predicted positions made target positions resulting, therefore, in track losses.
by both the fuzzy and the two-stage Kalman tracker when Figs. 5 and 6 illustrate the performance of the fuzzy and the
tracking targets in four different stressful environment each of two-stage Kalman tracker in a different stressful environment.
which exhibiting different characteristics. A target that is moving in a nearly straight line with constant
The first of them involves a target rapidly accelerating and velocity is being tracked. There is almost no missing obser-
making sharp turns. The target was missing from some scans vations. In this relatively nonstressful environment, it should
and it was also misrecognized several times during its flight. be noted that the Kalman tracker predicts a rather zigzag path.
Figs. 3 and 4 illustrate, respectively, the predictions made by It is quite sensitive to noise even though the noise level is at
the proposed fuzzy tracker and the two-stage Kalman tracker. a minimal.
As shown in the figure, the Kalman tracker suffers from some Figs. 7 and 8 illustrate the ability of the fuzzy and the two-
chain effect of mistaken actions, and this results in the amount stage Kalman tracker to closely follow a target that is rapidly
of deviation between the actual and the predicted positions accelerating along a rather straight line (i.e., accelerating but
accumulating scan by scan. This slowness in response to nonmaneuvering). The environment in which the tracking
sudden changes in flight dynamics is due to the time (usually experiment is performed is rather nonstressful in the sense
CHAN et al.: RADAR TRACKING FOR AIR SURVEILLANCE IN A STRESSFUL ENVIRONMENT
Fig. 6. Performance of Kalman tracker in a rather nonstressful environment.
Fig. 7. Performance of fuzzy tracker when the target accelerates rapidly.
that with the exception of the target accelerating rapidly there
are no missing observation and the noise level is relatively
low. As shown in the figure, in such a tracking environment,
the Kalman tracker made more mistakes leading to more track
losses.
Finally, Figs. 9 and 10 illustrate the problems associated
with target tracking in the presence of missing observations.
The environment in which the tracking task was performed
had a relatively low noise level. The target that was being
tracked did not maneuver or rapidly accelerate. As shown in
the figures, the Kalman tracker did not perform well in this
case. The maneuver detector which it employed was triggered
by a noisy data point and the Kalman tracker mistook it as
a sign for target maneuvering. It was “tricked” to trace off
a nonexistent maneuvering path. Quite unlike the Kalman
tracker, the fuzzy tracker did not have such a problem. This
is due mainly to its ability to take into consideration several
possibilities at the same time (as more than one rule can be
fired simultaneously).
87
Fig. 8. Performance of Kalman tracker when the target accelerates rapidly.
Fig. 9. Performance of fuzzy tracker in the presence of missing observations.
It should be noted that the likelihood of a target missing
from successive scans during a maneuver is quite high in real
life. This is especially true with high dynamic aircraft. Due to
the angle of flight and their ability to make sharp turns, they
are usually much more difficult to detect during maneuvering.
It should also be noted that the fuzzy tracker uses Mamdani’s
interpolation method based on center of area.
Other than the two-stage Kalman filter, the performance of
the fuzzy tracker had also been evaluated by comparing it
with an - tracker with set to 0.5 and set to 0.167 which
had been proved to be the best of fixed gains by Cohen [2],
[17], who based them on Benedict and Bordner’s formula for
optimum gain [18]. The result of the performance analysis are
discussed in [19].
V. CONCLUSION
In this article, we demonstrated the potential for using
fuzzy logic in the tracking of targets in stressful environment
88 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON FUZZY SYSTEMS, VOL. 5, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 1997

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pp. 228–237, Feb. 1992.
[7] K. Rokhsaz and J. E. Steck, “Use of neural networks in control of high-
alpha maneuvers,” J. Guidance, Contr., Dynamics, vol. 16, no. 5, pp.
934–939, 1993.
[8] Y. T. Chan and F. Couture, “Maneuver detection and track correction by
input estimation,” Inst. Elec. Eng. Proc., vol. 140, pp. 21–28, Feb. 1993.
[9] W. D. Blair, J. E. Gray, and M. D. Boyd, “Design analysis for the
two-stage ,  ,
estimator,” IEEE Proc., vol. 2, pp. 1050–1054, Apr.
1991.
[10] M. Munu, I. Harrison, and M. S. Woolfson, “Comparison of the Kalman
Fig. 10. Performance of Kalman tracker in the presence of missing obser-
vations.
characterized not only by high noise levels, but also by
targets accelerating at nonuniform rates, making sharp turns,
or missing from successive scans even during maneuvering.
By incorporating fuzzy logic in conventional - filters, the
coefficients are allowed to be modified dynamically based
on the conclusions of a set of fuzzy rules. These rules
determine and according to the magnitudes of the last
prediction error and change-of-error. To a certain extent they
reflect the likelihood of, say, the tracker encountering a noisy
measurement, a target moving in a straight path, or a target
maneuvering. Whenever more than one possible situation
needs to be considered simultaneously, more than one rule is
fired. The degrees at which these rules are fired are combined
quantitatively to determine the final values of and
The effectiveness of the fuzzy tracker was evaluated using
some real data sets representing a wide range of different
stressful environment. The performance in terms of prediction
error and the number of lost-tracks is compared against that
of a two-stage Kalman filter. The results show that the fuzzy
tracker has a very good degree of fault tolerance and a better
recovery rate. While these results are encouraging, more efforts
are required to study the robustness of the fuzzy tracker with
respect to changes in the membership functions and the rules.
Also, as is typically the case with other rule-based approaches,
whether or not this approach can be generalized to work with
all kinds of targets in all types of environment depends on
whether or not some automated approaches to finding the best
rules and membership functions can be developed [15], [16].
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[1] C. B. Chang and J. A. Tabaczynski, “Application of state estimation to
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adaptive target-tracking algorithms for phased-array radar,” Inst. Elec.
Eng. Proc., Pt. F., vol. 139, no. 5, pp. 336–342, Oct. 1992.
[3] W. D. Blair, “Fixed-gain two-stage estimators for tracking maneuvering
targets,” IEEE Trans. Aerosp. Electron. Syst., vol. 29, pp. 1004–1014,
July 1993.
and - filters for the tracking of targets using phased array radar,” in
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196–199.
[11] R. A. Singer, “Estimating optimal tracking filter performance for
manned maneuvering targets,” IEEE Trans. Aerosp. Electron. Syst.,
vol. AES-5, pp. 473–483, July 1970.
[12] S. S. Blackman, Multiple Target Tracking with Radar Applications.
Norwood, MA: Artech House, 1986.
[13] P. R. Kalata, “A-B target tracking systems: A survey,” in Proc. Amer.
Contr. Conf., Chicago, IL, June 1992, pp. 832–836.
[14] M. Gregoire, “Raid tracking trails (RATT): Digital plot data base,” Rep.
1026, Defense Res. Establishment Ottawa, ON, Canada, 1990.
[15] K. C. C. Chan, V. Lee, and H. Leung, “Automatic generation of fuzzy
rules using a natural genetic algorithm,” in Proc. SPIE Conf. Applicat.
Fuzzy Logic Technol. III, Orlando, FL, Apr. 8–12, 1996.
[16] V. Lee, K. C. C. Chan, and H. Leung, “Adaptive system noise covariance
for performance enhancement of kalman filter based algorithms,” in
Proc. SPIE Conf. Acquisition, Tracking, Pointing, X, Orlando, FL, Apr.
8–12, 1996.
[17] S. A. Cohen, “Adaptive variable update rate algorithm for tracking
targets with a phase array-radar,” Inst. Elec. Eng. Proc., Pt. F, vol. 133,
pp. 277–280, June 1986.
[18] T. R. Benedict and G. W. Bordner, “Synthesis of an optimal set of radar
track-while-scan smoothing equations,” IRE Trans., vol. 7, pp. 27–32,
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[19] K. C. C. Chan, V. Lee, and H. Leung, “Robust target tracking using a
fuzzy filter,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Syst., Man, Cybern,, Vancouver,
BC, Oct. 22–25, 1995.
Keith C. C. Chan (M’94) received the B.Math.
(computer science and statistics), M.A.Sc., and
Ph.D. degrees (systems design engineering), in
1984, 1985, and 1989, respectively, all from the
University of Waterloo, ON, Canada.
From 1984 to 1989, he worked as a Research
Assistant in the Pattern Analysis Machine Intel-
ligence Laboratory, University of Waterloo, ON,
Canada. Soon after graduation, he joined the IBM
Canada Laboratory, Toronto, where he was involved
in software development projects in the Image
Systems Center and the Application Development Technology Center. He
joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Ryerson
Polytechnic University, Toronto, ON, Canada, as an Associate Professor in
1993. Since 1994, he has been with the Department of Computing, The Hong
Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong, where he
is currently Associate Professor and Director of the Software Technology
Facilities Center. His research interest is in computational intelligence, data
mining, pattern recognition, and software engineering.
Dr. Chan was an adjunct faculty member of the Department of Systems
Design Engineering, University of Waterloo, ON, Canada, the Department
of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ryerson Polytechnic University,
Totonto, and the Department of Electrical Engineering, The University of
Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada.
CHAN et al.: RADAR TRACKING FOR AIR SURVEILLANCE IN A STRESSFUL ENVIRONMENT
Vika Lee received the B.A. degree in computing
from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung
Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong, in 1994, (fuzzy logic
and target tracking). He is currently an M.Phil.
candidate in the Department of Computing, The
Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom,
Kowloon, Hong Kong.
He was involved in various research projects in
geographical information systems as an undergrad-
uate student and had co-authored a paper in that
area. In his spare time, he works as a freelance
programmer. His research interests include fuzzy logic, genetic algorithms,
target tracking, simulation, the traveling salesman problem, classification, and
georgraphical information systems.
89
Henry Leung (S’88–M’90) received the B.Math.
degree in applied mathematics from the University
of Waterloo, ON, Canada, in 1984, the M.Sc. degree
in mathematics from the University of Toronto,
ON, Canada, in 1985, and the M.Eng. and Ph.D.
degrees in engineering physics and electrical engi-
neering from the McMaster University, Hamilton,
ON, Canada, in 1986 and 1991, respectively.
In 1990, he was a Research Engineer at the
Communications Research Laboratory, the McMas-
ter University, Hamilton, ON, Canada. In 1991, he
joined the Defense Research Establishment Ottawa, ON, Canada, as a defense
scientist. His research interests include adaptive signal processing, neural
network, nonlinear dynamics, and data fusion.