FROM RECEIVER OPERATING CHARACTERISTIC TO SYSTEM OPERATING CHARACTERISTIC - EVALUATION OF A TRACK FORMATION SYSTEM

This paper deals with the application of the multitarget tracking techniques in combination with a Markov chain model to the evaluation of a track formation system based on a composite logic. The goal is to evaluate target track detection probability and false track probability, and to determine the system's target capacity. The novelty of this work is that it computes target track detection probability in the presence of false alarms. The key to this is to explicitly account for the effective target detection probability. This probability is reduced by the presence of false alarms, which “mislead” the logic into using measurement association gates smaller than it should have used. The system operating characteristic (SOC) is introduced. The SOC is the plot of the target track detection probability versus the false track probability, where the values of target detection probability and the false alarm probability are varied to conform to the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) corresponding to the system's operating signal-to-noise ratio. This allows choice of the detector's operating point such as to satisfy the overall system requirements. A procedure to infer the overall system capacity in terms of the minimum spacing of targets that ensures tracking with a certain reliability is also presented. The entire methodology is illustrated with a case study dealing with an actual system. © 1990 IEEE