Universal Sea Target Tracking with Angle-only Measurements
A. P. Douglas, Michael T. Grabbe · 2010
This paper presents a method for angle-only surface ship tracking. The target kinematics are described with a set of geodetic rate equations that have been solved in terms of the ship’s local level velocity and its altitude relative to a reference Earth ellipsoid. The signicance of this approach is two fold. This implementation provides a mechanism that can implicitly constrain the target to sea level. Also, the ship’s kinematic representation in the local level frame is a natural coordinate system to develop the constant turn-rate constant speed maneuver model. The geodetic rate equations, augmented with the ship’s maneuvering characteristics, give rise to a set of dierential equations that serve as the set of evolution equations of an extended Kalman lter. The observation equations take the form of angle measurements made in the sensor frame. This paper provides a complete treatment of the plant and observation linearizations, the numerical solution of the process noise integral, and the technique for propagating sensor frame measurement covariances in the local level frame. Results for a three degrees-of-freedom simulation are presented along with a suggested extension to land based targets.