Asynchronous track-to-track association algorithm based on reference topology feature

In multi-sensor multi-target tracking systems, the different sensors provide their detections at different times due to having different sampling periods or communication delays. Therefore, for track-to-track association algorithms, it is not realistic to assume that sensors are synchronous. In this paper, we propose an asynchronous track-to-track association algorithm based on reference topology feature. For synchronization of sensor tracks, a one-step, memoryless track propagation scheme is used. The proposed method handles both the asynchronous and synchronous sensors. An improved performance is achieved by using the generalized sub-patterns assignment metric to calculate the association costs between two reference topologies. The proposed algorithm also provides an improved performance for the synchronized sensors case.