Tracking function in bistatic and multistatic radar systems

The paper presents a unified view of the tracking algorithms available for multistatic radar systems. The first topic considered is the derivation of tracking algorithms for bistatic radar. Different algorithms can be conceived according to different sets of measurements which may be processed (e.g. the range sum and one angle, or two angles). Mean and standard deviation values of tracking errors are evaluated by means of Monte Carlo simulation for a number of typical target paths. The major topic considered in the paper refers to the derivation of a unique tracking filter structure for multistatic radar systems. Particular attention is paid to the case of one transmitter and two noncolocated receivers; additionally, several combinations of multistatic measurements are considered. Furthermore, in this case the tracking performance of the algorithms are evaluated by means of Monte Carlo simulation techniques. The closing Section highlights the trends of the research towards multitarget tracking with distributed estimation techniques and the problem of data fusion.