Using Phase to Improve Track-Before-Detect

Track-Before-Detect (TkBD) is a paradigm that combines the target detection and estimation processes that are usually sequentially applied to sensor data in a conventional system. Existing literature uses only the envelope of complex data; this article presents an approach that also includes the phase information. The inclusion of phase is shown to both improve the discrimination of targets from noise and reduce the computation overhead, with improved performance demonstrated using three representative algorithms.