OTHR multipath tracking using the bernoulli filter

A multipath target tracking and recognition algorithm is proposed for an over-the-horizon radar (OTHR) tracking system in the presence of detection uncertainty and clutter. This algorithm, multipath Bernoulli filter (MPBF), uses a generalization of the Bernoulli filter for joint detection and tracking of a single target. Due to multiple ionospheric propagation paths between the radar sites and the target, finite set statistics (FISST) is used to derive the likelihood function of MPBF. While the measurement models in OTHR are nonlinear, a closed-form solution in the form of Gaussian mixture is implemented by extended Kalman filter (EKF). Since multipath tracks occur in the multipath probabilistic data association (MPDA) algorithm and the original MPBF, a method is added in MPBF to identify which are the real or multipath tracks. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is capable of recognizing multipath tracks and has better performance over the MPDA.