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"Track-Before-Detect" (TBD) is a target tracking technique where no threshold is applied at each measurement frame. Instead, data are processed over a number of frames before decisions on target existence are made. The track is returned simultaneously with the detection. A simple algorithm is presented and demonstrated via simulations. A detailed analysis enables detection and tracking performance to be predicted for particular algorithm parameters. Good performance is observed at low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), with rapid degradation as SNR is reduced further. For some cases the detection performance does not improve regardless of how many frames of data are processed. Tracking performance may also be poor even though detection performance is good.
Tonissen et al. (Mon,) studied this question.