Track Coalescence and Repulsion in Multitarget Tracking: An Analysis of MHT, JPDA, and Belief Propagation Methods

• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2308.06326
• Publication Date: 2024-01-01
• Authors: Thomas Kropfreiter; Florian Meyer; David F. Crouse; Stefano Coraluppi; Franz Hlawatsch; Peter Willett
• Keywords: Signal Processing (eess.SP); multiple hypothesis tracking; MHT; Multitarget tracking; FOS: Electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering; JPDA; Electrical engineering. Electronics. Nuclear engineering; Electrical Engineering and Systems Science - Signal Processing; joint probabilistic data association; belief propagation; TK1-9971

17 pages<br/>Joint probabilistic data association (JPDA) filter methods and multiple hypothesis tracking (MHT) methods are widely used for multitarget tracking (MTT). However, they are known to exhibit undesirable behavior in tracking scenarios with targets in close proximity: JPDA filter methods suffer from the track coalescence effect, i.e., the estimated tracks of targets in close proximity tend to merge and can become indistinguishable, and MHT methods suffer from an opposite effect known as track repulsion. In this paper, we review the JPDA filter and MHT methods and discuss the track coalescence and track repulsion effects. We also consider a more recent methodology for MTT that is based on the belief propagation (BP) algorithm, and we argue that BP-based MTT exhibits significantly reduced track coalescence and no track repulsion. Our theoretical arguments are confirmed by numerical results.<br/>