A Modified Dynamic Programming Approach for Dim Target Detection and Tracking

Dynamic Programming (DP) algorithm based Track Before Detect (TBD) is an efficient approach to detect the dim moving target. However, the big computational burden is the disadvantage of DP algorithm, which restricts its applications in many fields, such as radar detection where the real-time processing is a necessary requirement. A modified DP algorithm has been developed in this paper. The main idea of this algorithm is that a low threshold is applied to the measurement frame before DP processing. Its computational requirements and detection performance are analyzed and compared with traditional DP. Simulation results show that it can produce an order-of-magnitude reduction in computational demand with only about 1 dB detection performance loss. And more processing reduction can also be achieved, consequently, with more performance loss. Thus, this algorithm offers an approach of tradeoff between computational reduction and performance loss in DP processing. And by this kind of tradeoff, the real-time DP processing can be realized with acceptable performance loss in many fields.