Multiple extended target tracking algorithm based on GM-PHD filter and spectral clustering

With the increase of the resolution of modern radars and other detection equipments, one target may produce more than one measurement. Such targets are referred to as extended targets. Recently, multiple extended target tracking (METT) has drawn a considerable attention. However, one crucial problem is how to partition the measurement sets accurately and rapidly. In this paper, an improved METT algorithm is proposed based on the Gaussian mixture probability hypothesis density (GM-PHD) filter and an effective partition method using spectral clustering technique. First, the density analysis technique is introduced to eliminate the disturbance of clutter, and then the spectral clustering technique based on neighbor propagation is used to partition the measurements. Finally, the GM-PHD filter is implemented to achieve the METT. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm has a better performance, especially a better real-time performance, than the conventional distance partition and K-means++ methods.