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28 pages, 4560 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Space Debris Tracking with the Poisson Labeled Multi-Bernoulli Filter

by Leonardo Cament, Martin Adams and Pablo Barrios

Sensors 2021, 21(11), 3684; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21113684 - 26 May 2021

Cited by 8 | Viewed by 3824

This paper presents a Bayesian filter based solution to the Space Object (SO) tracking problem using simulated optical telescopic observations. The presented solution utilizes the Probabilistic Admissible Region (PAR) approach, which is an orbital admissible region that adheres to the assumption of independence [...] Read more.

This paper presents a Bayesian filter based solution to the Space Object (SO) tracking problem using simulated optical telescopic observations. The presented solution utilizes the Probabilistic Admissible Region (PAR) approach, which is an orbital admissible region that adheres to the assumption of independence between newborn targets and surviving SOs. These SOs obey physical energy constraints in terms of orbital semi-major axis length and eccentricity within a range of orbits of interest. In this article, Low Earth Orbit (LEO) SOs are considered. The solution also adopts the Partially Uniform Birth (PUB) intensity, which generates uniformly distributed births in the sensor field of view. The measurement update then generates a particle SO distribution. In this work, a Poisson Labeled Multi-Bernoulli (PLMB) multi-target tracking filter is proposed, using the PUB intensity model for the multi-target birth density, and a PAR for the spatial density to determine the initial orbits of SOs. Experiments are demonstrated using simulated SO trajectories created from real Two-Line Element data, with simulated measurements from twelve telescopes located in observatories, which form part of the Falcon telescope network. Optimal Sub-Pattern Assignment (OSPA) and CLEAR MOT metrics demonstrate encouraging multi-SO tracking results even under very low numbers of observations per SO pass. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Multi-Sensor Fusion for Object Detection and Tracking)

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19 pages, 2212 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Robust SMC-PHD Filter for Multi-Target Tracking with Unknown Heavy-Tailed Measurement Noise

by Yang Gong and Chen Cui

Sensors 2021, 21(11), 3611; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21113611 - 22 May 2021

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2090

Abstract

In multi-target tracking, the sequential Monte Carlo probability hypothesis density (SMC-PHD) filter is a practical algorithm. Influenced by outliers under unknown heavy-tailed measurement noise, the SMC-PHD filter suffers severe performance degradation. In this paper, a robust SMC-PHD (RSMC-PHD) filter is proposed. In the [...] Read more.

In multi-target tracking, the sequential Monte Carlo probability hypothesis density (SMC-PHD) filter is a practical algorithm. Influenced by outliers under unknown heavy-tailed measurement noise, the SMC-PHD filter suffers severe performance degradation. In this paper, a robust SMC-PHD (RSMC-PHD) filter is proposed. In the proposed filter, Student-t distribution is introduced to describe the unknown heavy-tailed measurement noise where the degrees of freedom (DOF) and the scale matrix of the Student-t distribution are respectively modeled as a Gamma distribution and an inverse Wishart distribution. Furthermore, the variational Bayesian (VB) technique is employed to infer the unknown DOF and scale matrix parameters while the recursion estimation framework of the RSMC-PHD filter is derived. In addition, considering that the introduced Student- t distribution might lead to an overestimation of the target number, a strategy is applied to modify the updated weight of each particle. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed filter is effective with unknown heavy-tailed measurement noise. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Multi-Sensor Fusion for Object Detection and Tracking)

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20 pages, 851 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Performance Study of Distance-Weighting Approach with Loopy Sum-Product Algorithm for Multi-Object Tracking in Clutter

by Pranav U. Damale, Edwin K. P. Chong and Tian J. Ma

Sensors 2021, 21(7), 2544; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21072544 - 5 Apr 2021

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2584

Abstract

In this paper, we explore the performance of the distance-weighting probabilistic data association (DWPDA) approach in conjunction with the loopy sum-product algorithm (LSPA) for tracking multiple objects in clutter. First, we discuss the problem of data association (DA), which is to infer the [...] Read more.

In this paper, we explore the performance of the distance-weighting probabilistic data association (DWPDA) approach in conjunction with the loopy sum-product algorithm (LSPA) for tracking multiple objects in clutter. First, we discuss the problem of data association (DA), which is to infer the correspondence between targets and measurements. DA plays an important role when tracking multiple targets using measurements of uncertain origin. Second, we describe three methods of data association: probabilistic data association (PDA), joint probabilistic data association (JPDA), and LSPA. We then apply these three DA methods for tracking multiple crossing targets in cluttered environments, e.g., radar detection with false alarms and missed detections. We are interested in two performance metrics: tracking accuracy and computation time. LSPA is known to be superior to PDA in terms of the former and to dominate JPDA in terms of the latter. Last, we consider an additional DA method that is a modification of PDA by incorporating a weighting scheme based on distances between position estimates and measurements. This distance-weighting approach, when combined with PDA, has been shown to enhance the tracking accuracy of PDA without significant change in the computation burden. Since PDA constitutes a crucial building block of LSPA, we hypothesize that DWPDA, when integrated with LSPA, would perform better under the two performance metrics above. Contrary to expectations, the distance-weighting approach does not enhance the performance of LSPA, whether in terms of tracking accuracy or computation time. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Multi-Sensor Fusion for Object Detection and Tracking)

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21 pages, 6082 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Credibility Assessment Method of Sensor Data Based on Multi-Source Heterogeneous Information Fusion

by Yanling Feng, Jixiong Hu, Rui Duan and Zhuming Chen

Sensors 2021, 21(7), 2542; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21072542 - 5 Apr 2021

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3314

Abstract

The credibility of sensor data is essential for security monitoring. High-credibility data are the precondition for utilizing data and data analysis, but the existing data credibility evaluation methods rarely consider the spatio-temporal relationship between data sources, which usually leads to low accuracy and [...] Read more.

The credibility of sensor data is essential for security monitoring. High-credibility data are the precondition for utilizing data and data analysis, but the existing data credibility evaluation methods rarely consider the spatio-temporal relationship between data sources, which usually leads to low accuracy and low flexibility. In order to solve this problem, a new credibility evaluation method is proposed in this article, which includes two factors: the spatio-temporal relationship between data sources and the temporal correlation between time series data. First, the spatio-temporal relationship was used to obtain the credibility of data sources. Then, the combined credibility of data was calculated based on the autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model and back propagation (BP) neural network. Finally, the comprehensive data reliability for evaluating data quality can be acquired based on the credibility of data sources and combined data credibility. The experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed method. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Multi-Sensor Fusion for Object Detection and Tracking)

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18 pages, 1308 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Unscented Particle Filter Algorithm Based on Divide-and-Conquer Sampling for Target Tracking

by Sichun Du and Qing Deng

Sensors 2021, 21(6), 2236; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21062236 - 23 Mar 2021

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3408

Abstract

Unscented particle filter (UPF) struggles to completely cover the target state space when handling the maneuvering target tracing problem, and the tracking performance can be affected by the low sample diversity and algorithm redundancy. In order to solve this problem, the method of [...] Read more.

Unscented particle filter (UPF) struggles to completely cover the target state space when handling the maneuvering target tracing problem, and the tracking performance can be affected by the low sample diversity and algorithm redundancy. In order to solve this problem, the method of divide-and-conquer sampling is applied to the UPF tracking algorithm. By decomposing the state space, the descending dimension processing of the target maneuver is realized. When dealing with the maneuvering target, particles are sampled separately in each subspace, which directly prevents particles from degeneracy. Experiments and a comparative analysis were carried out to comprehensively analyze the performance of the divide-and-conquer sampling unscented particle filter (DCS-UPF). The simulation result demonstrates that the proposed algorithm can improve the diversity of particles and obtain higher tracking accuracy in less time than the particle swarm algorithm and intelligent adaptive filtering algorithm. This algorithm can be used in complex maneuvering conditions. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Multi-Sensor Fusion for Object Detection and Tracking)

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14 pages, 3050 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Hybrid Newton–Raphson and Particle Swarm Optimization Method for Target Motion Analysis by Batch Processing

by Raegeun Oh, Yifang Shi and Jee Woong Choi

Sensors 2021, 21(6), 2033; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21062033 - 13 Mar 2021

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 3182

Abstract

Bearing-only target motion analysis (BO-TMA) by batch processing remains a challenge due to the lack of information on underwater target maneuvering and the nonlinearity of sensor measurements. Traditional batch estimation for BO-TMA is mainly performed based on deterministic algorithms, and studies performed with [...] Read more.

Bearing-only target motion analysis (BO-TMA) by batch processing remains a challenge due to the lack of information on underwater target maneuvering and the nonlinearity of sensor measurements. Traditional batch estimation for BO-TMA is mainly performed based on deterministic algorithms, and studies performed with heuristic algorithms have recently been reported. However, since the two algorithms have their own advantages and disadvantages, interest in a hybrid method that complements the disadvantages and combines the advantages of the two algorithms is increasing. In this study, we proposed Newton–Raphson particle swarm optimization (NRPSO): a hybrid method that combines the Newton–Raphson method and the particle swarm optimization method, which are representative methods that utilize deterministic and heuristic algorithms, respectively. The BO-TMA performance obtained using the proposed NRPSO was tested by varying the measurement noise and number of measurements for three targets with different maneuvers. The results showed that the advantages of both methods were well combined, which improved the performance. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Multi-Sensor Fusion for Object Detection and Tracking)

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16 pages, 9601 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Robust Template Adjustment Siamese Network for Object Visual Tracking

by Chuanming Tang, Peng Qin and Jianlin Zhang

Sensors 2021, 21(4), 1466; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21041466 - 20 Feb 2021

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2693

Abstract

Most of the existing trackers address the visual tracking problem by extracting an appearance template from the first frame, which is used to localize the target in the current frame. Unfortunately, they typically face the model degeneration challenge, which easily results in model [...] Read more.

Most of the existing trackers address the visual tracking problem by extracting an appearance template from the first frame, which is used to localize the target in the current frame. Unfortunately, they typically face the model degeneration challenge, which easily results in model drift and target loss. To address this issue, a novel Template Adjustment Siamese Network (TA-Siam) is proposed in this paper. The proposed framework TA-Siam consists of two simple subnetworks: The template adjustment subnetwork for feature extraction and the classification-regression subnetwork for bounding box prediction. The template adjustment module adaptively uses the feature of subsequent frames to adjust the current template. It makes the template adapt to the target appearance variation of long-term sequence and effectively overcomes model drift problem of Siamese networks. In order to reduce classification errors, the rhombus labels are proposed in our TA-Siam. For more efficient learning and faster convergence, our proposed tracker uses a more effective regression loss in the training process. Extensive experiments and comparisons with trackers are conducted on the challenging benchmarks including VOT2016, VOT2018, OTB50, OTB100, GOT-10K, and LaSOT. Our TA-Siam achieves state-of-the-art performance at the speed of 45 FPS. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Multi-Sensor Fusion for Object Detection and Tracking)

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18 pages, 933 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Robust Control for the Detection Threshold of CFAR Process in Cluttered Environments

by Jeong Hoon Shin and Youngjin Choi

Sensors 2020, 20(14), 3904; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20143904 - 13 Jul 2020

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 3907

Abstract

The constant false alarm rate (CFAR) process is essential for target detection in radar systems. Although the detection performance of the CFAR process is normally guaranteed in noise-limited environments, it may be dramatically degraded in clutter-limited environments since the probabilistic characteristics for clutter [...] Read more.

The constant false alarm rate (CFAR) process is essential for target detection in radar systems. Although the detection performance of the CFAR process is normally guaranteed in noise-limited environments, it may be dramatically degraded in clutter-limited environments since the probabilistic characteristics for clutter are unknown. Therefore, sophisticated CFAR processes that suppress the effect of clutter can be used in actual applications. However, these methods have the fundamental limitation of detection performance because there is no feedback structure in terms of the probability of false alarm for determining the detection threshold. This paper presents a robust control scheme for adjusting the detection threshold of the CFAR process while estimating the clutter measurement density (CMD) that uses only the measurement sets over a finite time interval in order to adapt to time-varying cluttered environments, and the probability of target existence with finite measurement sets required for estimating CMD is derived. The improved performance of the proposed method was verified by simulation experiments for heterogeneous situations. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Multi-Sensor Fusion for Object Detection and Tracking)

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28 pages, 9770 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Distributed Target Tracking in Challenging Environments Using Multiple Asynchronous Bearing-Only Sensors

by Yifang Shi, Jee Woong Choi, Lei Xu, Hyung June Kim, Ihsan Ullah and Uzair Khan

Sensors 2020, 20(9), 2671; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20092671 - 7 May 2020

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3290

Abstract

In the multiple asynchronous bearing-only (BO) sensors tracking system, there usually exist two main challenges: (1) the presence of clutter measurements and the target misdetection due to imperfect sensing; (2) the out-of-sequence (OOS) arrival of locally transmitted information due to diverse sensor sampling [...] Read more.

In the multiple asynchronous bearing-only (BO) sensors tracking system, there usually exist two main challenges: (1) the presence of clutter measurements and the target misdetection due to imperfect sensing; (2) the out-of-sequence (OOS) arrival of locally transmitted information due to diverse sensor sampling interval or internal processing time or uncertain communication delay. This paper simultaneously addresses the two problems by proposing a novel distributed tracking architecture consisting of the local tracking and central fusion. To get rid of the kinematic state unobservability problem in local tracking for a single BO sensor scenario, we propose a novel local integrated probabilistic data association (LIPDA) method for target measurement state tracking. The proposed approach enables eliminating most of the clutter measurement disturbance with increased target measurement accuracy. In the central tracking, the fusion center uses the proposed distributed IPDA-forward prediction fusion and decorrelation (DIPDA-FPFD) approach to sequentially fuse the OOS information transmitted by each BO sensor. The track management is carried out at local sensor level and also at the fusion center by using the recursively calculated probability of target existence as a track quality measure. The efficiency of the proposed methodology was validated by intensive numerical experiments. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Multi-Sensor Fusion for Object Detection and Tracking)

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