Improved infrared small target detection and tracking method based on new intelligence particle filter

Track‐before‐detect algorithm based on the particle filter algorithm has the problems of low tracking precision, poor particles, and requiring a large amount of particles to be calculated in a low signal‐to‐noise ratio, which is difficult to meet the accuracy and speed required by the modern infrared search and tracking system. In this paper, an improved infrared small target detection and tracking method based on a new particle filter is proposed. This is where particles are used to represent an individual bat to imitate the hunting process of bats. By adjusting loudness, frequency, and impulse emissivity of a particle swarm, the optimal particle at that time is followed to search in the solution space. In addition, the global search and the local search can also be dynamically switched to improve the quality and distribution of the particle swarm. The performance of the proposed algorithm is tested in a simulation scene and the real scene of the infrared small target detection and tracking. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm improves the performance of the infrared searching and tracking system.