Adaptive polarized waveform design for target tracking based on sequential Bayesian inference

In this paper, we develop an adaptive waveform design method for target tracking under a framework of sequential Bayesian inference. We employ polarization diversity to improve the tracking accuracy of a target in the presence of clutter. We use an array of electromagnetic (EM) vector sensors to fully exploit the polarization information of the reflected signal. We apply a sequential Monte Carlo method to track the target parameters, including target position, velocity, and scattering coefficients. This method has the advantage of being able to handle nonlinear and non-Gaussian state and measurement models. The measurements are the output of the sensor array; hence, the information about both the target and its environment is incorporated in the tracking process. We design a new criterion for selecting the optimal waveform one-step ahead based on a recursion of the posterior Cramér-Rao bound. We also derive an algorithm using Monte Carlo integration to compute this criterion and a suboptimal method that reduces the computation cost. Numerical examples demonstrate both the performance of the proposed tracking method and the advantage of the adaptive waveform design scheme.