Distributed multi-station target tracking based on unscented particle filter and Dempster-Shafer theory

In a distributed multi-station system, the observations received by local radar nodes for a single target will have a large signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) bias due to inconsistent radar cross-sections from distinct angles, different distances from the target, various local interference such as harsh weather, and dissimilar background noise. Integrating heterogeneous information in dynamic and uncertain environments can be challenging for the fusion centre. Moreover, the particles in the basic particle filter (PF) may degrade after many iterations, making it difficult to achieve accurate target state estimation in the local tracking process. To address these issues, the authors propose a novel method named DS-UPF based on the Dempster–Shafer (DS) theory and the unscented particle filter (UPF). By updating the important density function, the UPF efficiently suppresses particle degradation. The weighted Basic Probability Assignments (BPAs) are proposed and integrated under the new synthesis formula. The weight-modified DS method restrains the impact of significant local estimation errors on weighted BPAs fusion result, improving robustness without local interference prior knowledge. The experimental results demonstrate that the DS-UPF outperforms the unscented Kalman filter, PF, and UPF in tracking tasks under various local interference. This indicates that the proposed algorithm can improve estimation precision in dynamic and uncertain environments.