Bearing data association in the presence of clutter using a fictitious antenna array

We propose a novel approach to solve the bearing data association problem in the presence of clutter. The key idea is to interpret the azimuth measurements as being generated by an antenna array. In contrast to the traditional Hough transform approach, this direct estimator requires, in principle, no additional parameters like bearing variances. Furthermore, we present an improvement of both approaches using a peakpicking strategy. Finally, Monte Carlo simulations are carried out to evaluate the performance of the two bearing data association approaches. In the considered cases of large bearing errors and high clutter density, the fictitious array approach outperforms the Hough transform approach.