Information Theoretic Enumeration and Tracking of Multiple Sources

The problem of multiple target tracking using a passive direction-finding system is addressed when the number of targets is not known a priori. A new method is proposed that is suitable for systems operating in low signal-to-noise ratio and high clutter. Such conditions cause unpredictable variations of stochastic characteristics of noise and signals (especially for wideband frequency ones) and create ambiguity in the output of direction-finding algorithms. In this paper, we use the predictive description length (PDL) technique, which is an information theoretic approach, and by suitable modeling, we minimize the predictive codelength for statistical data description of position measurements. The PDL-dynamic programming (DP) method is also presented, which employs the DP algorithm to reduce the computational load of the PDL technique. The concept of tracking time-varying number of targets makes PDL-DP a suitable technique for target tracking in practical systems