Multisensor distributed out-of-sequence-tracks fusion with track origin uncertainty

Abstract The increased trend toward multisensor target tracking system is driving an interest for distributed tracks fusion algorithm. In such a system, local tracks formed by each sensor may arrive in the fusion center with temporal out-of-sequence because of different sensor data processing time and random communication delay, moreover, the priori information on the origins of tracks to be fused is usually unknown due to clutter disturbance and presence of multitargets. This paper considers the problem of fusing out-of-sequence tracks (OOSTs) with track origin uncertainty in a distributed fusion setup, and proposes a novel all neighbor fusion-integrated forward prediction fusion and decorrelation (ANF-IFPFD) method. The proposed ANF-IFPFD enumerates and probabilistically evaluates all feasible track-to-track association events, and fuses the central tracks with extracted information purely contributed by the local OOSTs through an information decorrelation process. Furthermore, it enables to operate the false track discrimination (FTD) in the fusion center by using the fused probability of target existence as a track quality measure. Additionally, two implementation configurations of the proposed ANF-IFPFD method are also designed to provide a trade-off between the tracking performance and the system communication bandwidth consumption. Monte Carlo simulations are carried out to validate the superiority of the proposed ANF-IFPFD over the enhanced state-of-art methods, in terms of both tracking performance and also computation-storage requirement. Compared to the configuration without any information feedback, the partial information feedback configuration of the ANF-IFPFD method is verified to deliver intensive improvements for both local tracking and tracks fusing.