Object Tracking in Images of an Airborne Wide Angle FMCW Radar

Object tracking is performed when surveillance applications have multiple observations of an object over time. An example of such a surveillance application is mounting a wideangle Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) radar system on board of a General Aviation aircraft. This is done in order to observe its environment in detail, including noncooperative objects such as birds and windmills. Data generated by such a system follows different physical laws than the images of standard visual applications. In this paper, a novel tracking algorithm is introduced which is tailor-made for FMCW applications. The algorithm is tested in a simulated crowded general aviation airspace, and the resulting tracks are qualitatively and quantitatively analysed. The proposed algorithm performs better than a traditional algorithm on all aspects, but tracking errors can still be made in rare cases. The proposed algorithm can be used in conjunction with research focusing on observation quality or assignment problems.Control & Simulatio