An Examination of Dichotomous and Centroid Tracking of a Monopulse Angle Tracking Unit
Jonathan Andrews, M.C. Budge, L.L. Joiner · 2018
The engineering community is confident in its assessment of how an angle tracker will perform in a multitarget environment as the target-to-tracker range decreases, causing targets to leave the tracker antenna beam. When one target signal dominates due to the angular separation of the targets, the tracker will center on the dominating signal. It is not well understood how the tracker will behave when angle separation is not the limiting factor in signal strength. That topic is addressed in this paper. Specifically, we show how angle error signal normalization impacts track loop dynamics in a dual target scenario. If the error signal is normalized by an Automatic Gain Control (AGC), the behavior will depend upon the Doppler frequency separation of the two targets relative to the AGC bandwidth. The problem is addressed from a theoretical perspective, and via simulation. The theoretical and simulation results agree well.