Accuracy of location measurement of a noisy target in a nonoverlapping background

Accuracy of target position estimation, defined as the variance of location errors, is evaluated when a noisy target is embedded on a nonoverlapping background. It is shown, with some assumptions, that the generalized matched filter minimizes this variance. We also investigate the performance of various correlation filters in terms of location accuracy. Computer simulations are made to compare the results obtained with the generalized matched filter with those of other filters. © 1996 Optical Society of America.