A Structured Approach to Passive Sonar Track Association

The presence of multiple, apparently independent track segments originating from the same target complicates the track-level passive sonar picture. If some of these segments can be shown to have common origin, they can be associated into a single composite track, simplifying that picture. The process could also provide additional information about the target, such as range or classification. Track association is typically a manual process, relying on the expertise of a human sonar operator. If a method could be found to reliably apply numerical scores to the degree of apparent relationship between pairs of tracks, those scores could be used to assist an operator in the track association process or as inputs to a fully automated track association process. This paper outlines the construction of a test based on the sample correlation coefficient and describes the result of its application to tracks produced by a probabilistic data association filter (PDAF) from a set of towed array sensor data.