An improved TBD method based on modified Hough transform and Viterbi algorithm for early detection of dim target

Track-before-detect (TBD) method based on Hough transform (HT) has been presented for radar dim target detection in low SNR environments. In view of the flaws of the conventional algorithm based on HT, a new improved method with the optimization principle is proposed based on the modified HT in this paper. The algorithm procedure can be summarized like this: estimating track of target by the modified HT; then fixing a searching region around the track based on dynamic characteristic of target; finally using reduced-complexity Viterbi algorithm (VA) to make noncoherent optimization accumulation of data and detecting target by a set threshold. The experimental results verify the validity and superiority of the proposed approach.