PHD filter based track-before-detect for MIMO radars

In this paper a Probability Hypothesis Density (PHD) filter based track-before-detect (TBD) algorithm is proposed for Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) radars. The PHD filter, which propagates only the first-order statistical moment of the full target posterior, is a computationally efficient solution to multitarget tracking problems with varying number of targets. The proposed algorithm avoids any assumption on the maximum number of targets as a result of estimating the number of targets together with target states. With widely separated transmitter and receiver pairs, the algorithm utilizes the Radar Cross Section (RCS) diversity as a result of target illumination from ideally uncorrelated aspects. Furthermore, a multiple sensor TBD is proposed in order to process the received signals from different transmitter-receiver pairs in the MIMO radar system. In this model, the target observability to the sensor as a result of target RCS diversity is taken in to consideration in the likelihood calculation. In order to quantify the performance of the proposed algorithm, the Posterior Cramer-Rao Lower Bound (PCRLB) for widely separated MIMO radars is also derived. Simulation results show that the new algorithm meets the PCRLB and provides better results compared with standard Maximum Likelihood (ML) based localizations.