Performance Evaluation Metrics and Approaches for Target Tracking: A Survey

Performance evaluation (PE) plays a key role in the design and validation of any target-tracking algorithms. In fact, it is often closely related to the definition and derivation of the optimality/suboptimality of an algorithm such as that all minimum mean-squared error estimators are based on the minimization of the mean-squared error of the estimation. In this paper, we review both classic and emerging novel PE metrics and approaches in the context of estimation and target tracking. First, we briefly review the evaluation metrics commonly used for target tracking, which are classified into three groups corresponding to the most important three factors of the tracking algorithm, namely correctness, timeliness, and accuracy. Then, comprehensive evaluation (CE) approaches such as cloud barycenter evaluation, fuzzy CE, and grey clustering are reviewed. Finally, we demonstrate the use of these PE metrics and CE approaches in representative target tracking scenarios.