Incorporating Target Strength Into Environmentally-Adaptive Sonar Tracking

This paper discusses an extension to existing methods for tracking underwater targets in multistatic active sensor fields using the Probabilistic Data Association Filter with Amplitude Information (PDAFAI). Target strength distributions as a function of aspect of expected targets are used to develop a new characterization of the signal-plus-noise probability density function that can account for knowledge of a target´s aspect as a track develops or for the lack of such knowledge for newly created tracks. These density functions are then used in the amplitude likelihood ratio to provide more accurate data association.