Bearings-only Passive Target Tracking: Range Uncertainty Ellipse Zone

ABSTRACT

In passive underwater target tracking, the observer uses bearings-only measurements generated by radiation of the target. The measurements are always corrupted with noise, which creates an uncertainty zone around the target position. Unscented Kalman filter (UKF) is proved to be efficient nonlinear estimator to estimate the target motion parameters. It is of interest to know in many practical situations, regarding the convergence of the solution in terms of the reduction of the uncertainty zone within some specified limit. An effort is made to reduce and find the range uncertainty ellipse zone of the target using UKF covariance matrix in Monte Carlo simulation. Once the range uncertainty ellipse zone becomes less than a specified value, the solution is said to be converged.

ABBREVIATIONS: RUEZ: Range Uncertainty Ellipse Zone; UKF: Unscented Kalman Filter; UT: Unscented Transformation; LHMA: Length of Half Major Axis

KEYWORDS:

• Probability theory
• Statistical signal processing
• Target tracking
• Unscented Kalman filter

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research is supported by Sonar Signal Behavior (SSB) Panel, Naval Research Board (NRB), DRDO via a sponsored project: NRB-362/SSB/15-16. The author would like to acknowledge Chairman and members of SSB Panel, NRB; Director, Naval Science and Technological Laboratory and President, Koneru Lakshmaiah University for their continuous support and encouragement.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

S. Koteswara Rao

S Koteswara Rao, former scientist “G” in NSTL, DRDO, Visakhapatnam, is currently working as professor in Koneru Lakshmaiah Education Foundation, Vaddeswaram, Guntur, AP, India. He received his BTech in 1977 at JNTU and ME in 1979, PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore and PhD at Andhra University all in electrical engineering. He published several papers in international conferences and journals in the field of signal processing. He is a fellow member of IETE.