Impulsive Data Association with an Unknown Number of Targets

Abstract

First- and second-order solution methods for the multi-target data association problem with an unknown number of targets are presented. It is shown that by considering a single continuous measurement signal with impulsive switching between measuring the position of different objects, the data association problem can be recast as a continuous optimization over the impulse times and magnitudes. First- and second-order adjoint formulations are derived which reduce the calculation of the either the first- or second-order derivative of the cost function to a single integration (over any number of impulse times and magnitudes). These adjoint formulations as well as a method for estimating the total number of impulses which occur are the main contributions of this work.