Thomas Norman Barker

Data association problems posed as multidimensional assignment problems: algorithm development

The central problem in multitarget-multisensor tracking is the data association problem of partitioning the observations into tracks and false alarms so that an accurate estimate of the true tracks can be recovered. Many previous and current methodologies are based on single scan processing, which is real-time, but often leads to a large number of partial and incorrect assignments, and thus incorrect track identification. The fundamental difficulty is that data association decisions once made are irrevocable. Deferred logic methods such as multiple hypothesis tracking allow correction of these misassociations and are thus considered to be the method for tracking a large number of targets. The corresponding data association problems are however NP-hard and must be solved in real-time. The current work develops a class of algorithms that produce near-optimal solutions in real-time and are potentially orders of magnitude faster than existing methods.

Data association problems posed as multidimensional assignment problems: numerical simulations

The central problem in multitarget-multisensor tracking is the data association problem of partitioning the observations into tracks and false alarms so that an accurate estimate of the true tracks can be recovered. Many previous and current methodologies are based on single scan processing, which is real-time, but often leads to a large number of partial and incorrect assignments, and thus incorrect track identification. The fundamental difficulty is that data association decisions once made are irrevocable. Deferred logic methods such as multiple hypothesis tracking allow correction of these misassociations and are thus considered to be the method for tracking a large number of targets. The corresponding data association problems are however NP-hard and must be solved in real-time. Such algorithms have been developed in earlier work of the authors and the intent of this work is to demonstrate the efficiency and robustness on a class of tracking problems.

Data association for track initiation and extension using multiscan windows

The central problem in multitarget-multisensor tracking is the data association problem of partitioning the observations into tracks and false alarms so that an accurate estimate of the true tracks can be recovered. Many previous and current methodologies are based on single scan processing, which is real-time, but often leads to a large number of partial and incorrect assignments, and thus incorrect track identification. The fundamental difficulty with this approach is that there is simply not enough information in single scan processing to properly partition the observations into tracks and false alarms. In this work we formulate the problem of data association for track initiation and extension using multiscan windows in order to obtain superior track identification. A model problem is investigated to show the effect of window size, probability of detection, probability of false alarms, and measurement error on solution quality and timings.