Development of Practical PDA Logic for Multitarget Tracking by Microprocessor

A simplified form of probabilistic data association (PDA) logic was developed for real-time multitarget tracking by a microprocessor associated with a radar track-while-scan system. A variety of practical problems with the method led to a relatively complex set of algorithms, while certain fundamental shortcomings of the approach still threatened performance due to anomalous behavior in some situations. Ultimately, the weighted-average updating feature of the PDA approach was abandoned in favor of a "nearest-neighbor PDA" method, which utilizes the PDA association probabilities to associate a single measurement with each track.