Radar track extraction systems

The main constituents of a largely automatic radar track-while-scan system are described. It contains a plot extractor, clutter map, stationary plot filter, and automatic tracking software. The system is designed to operate in high false alarm conditions without formation of false tracks. The clutter map is used to select the optimum video for processes by the plot extractor, which is of fairly conventional design using cell-averaging CFAR and single level quantization. The plot extractor output has the majority of land clutter removed by the stationary plot filter and remaining plots are used in the formation and updating of tracks. The track updating algorithms are based on adaptive Kalman filters with various arithmetic simplifications for efficient computer processing.