Robust infrared target tracking algorithm for anti-UAV in complexbackgrounds

Zicheng FENG; Wenlong ZHANG; Donghui LIU; Qifeng YU

doi:10.7527/S1000-6893.2025.32264

ACTA AERONAUTICAET ASTRONAUTICA SINICA >

2026 , Vol. 47 >Issue 4: 332264 - 332264

DOI: https://doi.org/10.7527/S1000-6893.2025.32264

Electronics and Electrical Engineering and Control

Robust infrared target tracking algorithm for anti-UAV in complexbackgrounds

Zicheng FENG ,
Wenlong ZHANG ,
Donghui LIU ,
Qifeng YU

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^1.College of Aerospace Science and Engineering，National University of Defense Technology，Changsha 410073，China
^2.Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of Image Measurement and Vision Navigation，Changsha 410073，China

E-mail： wenlong@nudt.edu.cn

Received date: 2025-05-20

Revised date: 2025-07-14

Accepted date: 2025-08-19

Online published: 2025-09-05

Supported by

National Natural Science Foundation of China(12202485)

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Abstract

In the anti-UAV task under complex backgrounds， infrared target tracking faces numerous challenges，such as multi-scale targets， occlusion， moving out of view， and background interference. To address these problems，a robust infrared UAV tracking algorithm is proposed. First， a global tracking model is designed， which adopts an effi⁃cient one-stage anchor-free framework to perform global search for handling target disappearance caused by occlusionor moving out of view， while employing a multi-level structure to track targets of varying sizes. Second， a spatiotemporalfeature fusion module based on the memory network is proposed， which leverages spatio-temporal featuresfrom video sequences to enhance target discriminability. Third， a target enhancement and interference suppressionmodule is introduced， which records and matches target and interference features between frames to generate weight⁃ing maps. These maps are applied to the score maps to improve the algorithm’s anti-interference capability. Finally， adynamic hierarchical acceleration method is proposed to improve the running efficiency by removing redundant hierar⁃chical computations. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm achieves 92. 4% and 78. 7% preci⁃sion and 69. 4% and 56. 5% success rates on the 2nd and 3rd Anti-UAV datasets， respectively， with a running speedof 26. 9 framen per second， which significantly outperforms existing methods and achieves real-time and robust UAVtracking in complex scenarios

Key words： infrared target tracking; nti-UAV; complex background; anti-interference; real-time tracking; deep learning

Cite this article

Zicheng FENG , Wenlong ZHANG , Donghui LIU , Qifeng YU . Robust infrared target tracking algorithm for anti-UAV in complexbackgrounds[J]. ACTA AERONAUTICAET ASTRONAUTICA SINICA, 2026 , 47(4) : 332264 -332264 . DOI: 10.7527/S1000-6893.2025.32264

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