A reliability-based track fusion algorithm

The common track fusion algorithms in multi-sensor systems have some defects, such as serious imbalances between accuracy and computational cost, the same treatment of all the sensor information regardless of their quality, high fusion errors at inflection points. To address these defects, a track fusion algorithm based on the reliability (TFR) is presented in multi-sensor and multi-target environments. To improve the information quality, outliers in the local tracks are eliminated at first. Then the reliability of local tracks is calculated, and the local tracks with high reliability are chosen for the state estimation fusion. In contrast to the existing methods, TFR reduces high fusion errors at the inflection points of system tracks, and obtains a high accuracy with less computational cost. Simulation results verify the effectiveness and the superiority of the algorithm in dense sensor environments.