Distributed tracking in a cluttered environment

A distributed target tracking structure is presented. In this technique, a set of geographically distributed sensors supplies their local observations of the state of a target in clutter to nearby local processors for local processing. Each processor communicates the results of its estimation algorithm to a coordinator which updates the target's track based on all the sensors' observation histories without having access to these observations. For local processing the local processor assumes local models which may be different from the coordinator's models of the distributed observations dynamics. To account for the uncertainties in the origin of the sensors' returns, the probabilistic data association technique is used.<>