A novel track-before-detect procedure for multi-frame detection in radar systems

We consider the problem of multi-frame target detection in radar systems.. The Detector and Plot Extractor, operating on a scan-by-scan basis, provides a list of candidate detections (or plots) to a Track-before-detect (TBD) Processor, which correlates data over multiple scans (or frames) before taking the final decision as to the target presence. A new dynamic programming algorithm to implement the TBD processor is derived: the algorithm accounts for the fact that the number of plots can be much smaller than the number of resolution elements and efficiently computes the test statistics. Its computational complexity scales linearly with the number of integrated scans and quadratically with the average number of detection in each plot-list. Numerical examples are given to show the merits of the proposed algorithm.