Detection and Tracking of Multipath Targets in Over-the-Horizon Radar

In skywave over-the-horizon radar, the ionosphere often supports multiple propagation paths, and a single target can appear as a family of returns. This paper presents two new tracking approaches for this environment: The first uses measurement fusion, and the second uses group-target track-before-detect algorithm. In contrast to previous studies, we find that the biggest benefit is not improved detection sensitivity but rather associating the whole pattern of multipath returns significantly improves the ability to follow maneuvers.