Signal processing with reduced combinatorial complexity for tracking
evolving phenomena such as radar tracks associated with weighted
measurement parameters includes selecting a current phenomenon and
obtaining a set of measurement parameters associated with it. Beginning
at a start node providing a first parent node having an identity, an
identity for a child node of the patent is produced from the sets of
parameters, the parent identity and a parameter selected from the set and
corresponding to the child. This is iterated for other parameters in the
set. Child nodes of like identity for the phenomenon are treated as a
single node with multiple parameter relationships associated with at lest
one parent node, whereas child nodes with differing identities are
represented as separate nodes. The process is iterated for other
phenomena and associated sets of measurement parameters, but child nodes
of a previously processed phenomenon are not treated as parent nodes of a
phenomenon processed immediately following. Updated sets of parameters
weights associated with respective phenomena are derived by iterating
over node relationships and identifies. This provides a probabilistic
assessment of track evolution.