Implementation of multi-vessel tracking algorithm using multiple marine radar systems

Abstract

To prevent marine casualties, marine radars are widely used for tracking vessels near coast and, in general, multiple marine radars are applied to cover wide coastal area. Therefore their cooperative operation is very important for effective vessel traffic control. This work introduces implementation of a multi-vessel, multi-radar tracking algorithm which can be used for such purpose. The implemented algorithm is based on the sensor-level tracking with centralized track file architecture which maintains a sensor-level (local) track file at each local radar site and integrate them into one central-level (global) track file using cross-correlation of the sensor-level tracks. The sensor-level tracking at each local radar site employs the conventional global nearest neighbor (GNN) approach which uses the auction algorithm for data association. The sensor-level tracks formed at each radar site are transmitted to data fusion center and combined by a track-to-track fusion algorithm to give central-level tracks. The resulting central-level tracks are also correlated against time to give a continuous track file for each target vessel even though it goes through the border of different radar's scan area. To validate the algorithm, a simulation was fulfilled and it showed that it operated property as intended. ？2004 IEEE.