X band radar target tracking in marine environment: A comparison of different algorithms in a real scenario

Radar detection and tracking in a marine environment represent a challenge because the sea-clutter can cause the presence of many false alarms and ultimately lead to the loss of the target. X-band radar systems represent a flexible and low-cost tool for ship detection and tracking, as they can provide high resolution measurement, both in space and time. On the other hand, these systems obviously suffer the interference of the sea-clutter. In this communication, we discuss some issues related to the target state prediction in presence of clutter. Moreover, we provide the validation of two tracking algorithms, the nearest neighbor standard Kalman filter and the cheap joint probabilistic data association filter, on real data acquired by an X-band radar system installed at the Giglio island during the recovery operations of Costa Concordia cruise ship.