TRACK EXTENSION FOR USE WITH ATCRBS SURVEILLANCE PROCEDURES

During ATCRBS surveillance procedures, a multiplicity of target aircraft are typically detected through target replies from interrogation signals. However, the nature of the target acquisition procedures are such that positive identification of the target aircraft is not available. Rather than ordering the target tracks with increasing range and correlating the target replies with tracks based on the ordering of the target tracks, the tracks are prioritized, based on confidence in the reliability of the identification of each track, into groups. An attempt to correlate the tracks of each group with the set of target replies is performed for the groups in order of decreasing priority. A target reply is assigned to a track when a correlation between a track and a target reply is determined.