An Intelligent Particle Filter for Infrared Dim Small Target Detection and Tracking

With consideration of low tracking accuracy and even losing target when the track-before-detect method based on particle filter (PF-TBD) tracks infrared dim small target in the complex background. In this article, a track-before-detect method based on the spring model firefly algorithm optimization particle filter (SFA-PF-TBD) was proposed to address this problem. First, the attractiveness and movement behavior of fireflies were introduced into the particle filter for optimizing the particles, and the optimization strength was controlled by evaluating the real-time distribution of particles. After optimization, detecting the density of the particles around the optimal particle, the elastic mechanism of spring was used to control the density of particles around the optimal particle when the particles gathered excessively, which made the distribution of particles more reasonable. Then, the TBD method was realized by the improved particle filter for tracking dim small target under the low signal-noise ratio conditions. Finally, we compared the SFA-PF-TBD algorithm with other algorithms by tracking experiments in simulation scenes and actual scenes. The results showed that the SFA-PF-TBD algorithm has more advantages than the PF-TBD algorithm.