ESM-aided mti track segment stitching for turning maneuvering targets

Track breakages due to target maneuver lead to the wrong report of target number along with the bad track continuity, hence it is of high demand to develop track segment association (TSA) technique, especially in the dense target case. This paper presents the problem of ESM-aided MTI track segments stitching by the fact that it is much helpful to discern geographically-close targets by utilizing the ESM information about target attribute. Considering turning maneuvering targets, the initial and terminate maneuvering instants are also needed to be identified, along with turn rate. The scheme is proposed including attribute assignment, hypothesis refinement, and joint estimation and identification in the expectation conditional maximization (ECM) framework. The simulations show that introducing ESM information can improve the track continuity and the association correctness.