Methods for bearings-only underwater target motion analysis

The problem of estimation of underwater target motion parameters via bearings only is the most of ten encountered and most difficult to solve in the underwater target motion analysis.As the bearings-only target motion analysis is a nonlinear and multiextremal global optimization problem, so most classical estimation methods often lead the solution to convergence to one of the local extremes other than the global extreme, especially, when the noise of target bearing observation is added. In this paper we propose to use the Generalized Least Square method on the rough estimation of target motion parameters, and then use the Sequential Uniform Design method to gain a more precise estimation on the bases of rough estimation.The latter ensures that the result convergences to the global extreme. The algorithm based on the above two methods is profitable for the bearings-only target motion analysis even under conditions of large bearing observation error.

Passive bearings-only target motion analysis based on association of multiple arrays

The method for Bearings-Only Target Motion Analysis (BO-TMA) based on bearing measurements fusion of two arrays is studied. The algorithms of pseudolinear processing, extended Kalman filter and maximum likelihood estimation are presented. The results of simulation experiments show that the BO-TMA method based on association of multiple arrays not only makes contributions towards eliminating maneuvers needed by bearings-only TMA based on single array,but also improves the stabilization and global convergence for varied estimation algorithms.

Comparison of different pseudo-linear estimators for vision-based target motion estimation

Vision-based target motion estimation based Kalman filtering or least-squares estimators is an important problem in many tasks such as vision-based swarming or vision-based target pursuit.In this paper,we focus on a problem that is very specific yet we believe important.That is,from the vision measurements,we can formulate various measurements.Which and how the measurements should be used?These problems are very fundamental,but we notice that practitioners usually do not pay special attention to them and often make mistakes.Motivated by this,we formulate three pseudo-linear measurements based on the bearing and angle measurements,which are standard vision measurements that can be obtained.Different estimators based on Kalman filtering and least-squares estimation are established and compared based on numerical experiments.It is revealed that correctly analyzing the covariance noises is critical for the Kalman filtering-based estimators.When the variance of the original measurement noise is unknown,the pseudo-linear least-squares estimator that has the smallest magnitude of the transformed noise can be a good choice.

Moving scanning emitter tracking by a single observer using time of interception:Observability analysis and algorithm

The target motion analysis（TMA） for a moving scanning emitter with known fixed scan rate by a single observer using the time of interception（TOI） measurements only is investigated in this paper.By transforming the TOI of multiple scan cycles into the direction difference of arrival（DDOA） model,the observability analysis for the TMA problem is performed.Some necessary conditions for uniquely identifying the scanning emitter trajectory are obtained.This paper also proposes a weighted instrumental variable（WIV） estimator for the scanning emitter TMA,which does not require any initial solution guess and is closed-form and computationally attractive.More importantly,simulations show that the proposed algorithm can provide estimation mean square error close to the Cramer-Rao lower bound（CRLB） at moderate noise levels with significantly lower estimation bias than the conventional pseudo-linear least square（PLS） estimator.

Periodic acoustic source tracking using propagation delayed measurements

There exist a large class of acoustic sources which have an underlying periodic phenomenon. Unlike the well-studied Bearings-Only Tracking(BOT) of an aperiodic acoustic source,this paper considers the problem of tracking a periodic acoustic source. For periodic acoustic tracking, the signal emission time is known. However, the true measurement reception time is unknown because it is corrupted by noise due to propagation delay. We augment the sensor’s signal reception time onto bearing measurements, and the information of the delay constraint is included in the original bearing measurements to compensate for the propagation delay. A Cubature Kalman Filter(CKF) is used for periodic acoustic source tracking, in which measurement prediction cannot be obtained directly because the sensor’s position at the true measurement reception time is unknown.We solve this problem by using the implicit Gauss-Helmert Sensor Model(GHSM) for estimating the sensor’s position, which consists of the sensor’s motion equation and the known measured sensor’s signal reception time equation related to the state. Then a CKF based on the GHSM(CF-GHSM) is developed for periodic acoustic tracking. Illustrative examples demonstrate that the CF-GHSM algorithm is better than other algorithms for periodic acoustic source tracking.