Abstract: As Kernelized correlation filter is difficult to deal with the problems of illumination changes and total occlusion of the target, a target tracking algorithm based on improved Kernelized correlation filter was proposed in this paper. Firstly, a Gaussian Kernel correlated operator based on the phase characteristics was proposed to improve the ability of the algorithm to adapt to the change of the light intensity. Then, a tracking mechanism of predicting-tracking-correction based on Kalman filter and an occlusion-handling mechanism were proposed to improve the accuracy of tracking while the target was totally occluded. In the aspect of model updating, an adaptive updating strategy was adopted. The models with better tracking effect were used to establish the alternative model and replace the models with bad tracking effect to correct the problems of model migration and characteristics losing. The experimental results show that the improved algorithm can effectively improve the ability to adapt to the illumination changes and keep a good tracking effect while the target is totally occluded.