Distributed tracking in a cluttered environment

A distributed target tracking structure is presented. In this technique, a set of geographically distributed sensors supplies their local observations of the state of a target in clutter to nearby local processors for local processing. Each processor communicates the results of its estimation algorithm to a coordinator which updates the target´s track based on all the sensors´ observation histories without having access to these observations. For local processing the local processor assumes local models which may be different from the coordinator´s models of the distributed observations dynamics. To account for the uncertainties in the origin of the sensors´ returns, the probabilistic data association technique is used.<>