An S-dimensional assignment algorithm for track initiation

The authors address the problem of initiating tracks of multiple targets using passive sensors only. They present a near-optimal polynomial-time S-dimensional (S⩾3) assignment algorithm that is especially suited to the track initiation based on measurements from S sensors. The assignment problem generated by the scenario considered is very sparse, and is easily solved in less than a second. However, the most computationally intensive part of this algorithm is the formation of LS estimates for each S-tuple. This phase can be made more efficient by using improved gating schemes and optimization algorithms. It is also highly parallelizable, and may be implemented in parallel computers