Multitarget tracking in the presence of wakes

In this paper we focus on targets which, in addition to reflecting signals themselves, also have a trailing path behind them, called a wake. When the detections are fed to a tracking system like the Probabilistic Data Association Filter, the estimated track can be misled and sometimes lose the real target because of the wake. This problem becomes even more severe in multitarget environments where targets are operating close to each other in the presence of wakes. To prevent this, we have developed a probabilistic model of the wakes in a multitarget environment. This model is used to augment the Joint Probabilistic Data Association Filter (JPDAF). Simulations of two crossing targets with wakes show that this modification gives good results and the number of lost tracks is significantly reduced.