Vessel fusion tracking with a dual-frequency high-frequency surface wave radar and calibrated by an automatic identification system

High-frequency surface wave radar (HFSWR) and automatic identification system (AIS) are the two most important sensors used for vessel tracking. The HFSWR can be applied to tracking all vessels in a detection area, while the AIS is usually used to verify the information of cooperative vessels. Because of interference from sea clutter, employing single-frequency HFSWR for vessel tracking may obscure vessels located in the blind zones of Bragg peaks. Analyzing changes in the detection frequencies constitutes an effective method for addressing this deficiency. A solution consisting of vessel fusion tracking is proposed using dual-frequency HFSWR data calibrated by the AIS. Since different systematic biases exist between HFSWR frequency measurements and AIS measurements, AIS information is used to estimate and correct the HFSWR systematic biases at each frequency. First, AIS point measurements for cooperative vessels are associated with the HFSWR measurements using a JVC assignment algorithm. From the association results of the cooperative vessels, the systematic biases in the dualfrequency HFSWR data are estimated and corrected. Then, based on the corrected dual-frequency HFSWR data, the vessels are tracked using a dual-frequency fusion joint probabilistic data association (JPDA)-unscented Kalman filter (UKF) algorithm. Experimental results using real-life detection data show that the proposed method is efficient at tracking vessels in real time and can improve the tracking capability and accuracy compared with tracking processes involving single-frequency data.