Track heading and speed estimation

Abstract

A new method to enhance the performance of multi radar tracking systems is presented in this paper. In parallel to an IMM model type tracker a second tracker estimates track heading and speed based upon differential measurements from multiple sensors. A differential measurement contains the differences between two subsequent measurements from one sensor. This new method accepts information from multiple sensors but completely avoids sensor registration problems. While a common multi radar tracker must take into account at least residual registration errors, the heading/speed tracker accepts the full accuracy of each individual sensor. This leads to high manoeuvre susceptibility and also to a high stability in the non manoeuvre case. The results demonstrate the tracking performance enhancement achieved by the combination of the new method with the standard tracking method.