AN ALPHA-BETA TRACKING FILTER COMBINED WITH MANEUVER-DRIVEN CIRCULAR PREDICTION

In track-while-scan systems using phased array antennas, alpha-beta fi lters have been employed. An alpha-beta filter can estimate reliably t he target position and velocity operating in real-time: However, when the target maneuvers, the quality of position and velocity estimates p rovided by alpha-beta filters can degrade significantly. The target ma y be lost, since the filter uses only linear prediction. In this paper , we take notice of the fact that a maneuvering target trajectory can be regarded as an arc and propose the use of an alpha-beta tracking fi lter combined with maneuver-driven circular prediction as a scheme to estimate target position using nonlinear prediction. Simulation result s for three target profiles are included for comparison of the perform ance of our proposed scheme with that of a conventional alpha-beta tra cking filter and a Kalman filter. The effectiveness of our proposed sc heme is examined by means of a computational simulation. (C) 1997 Scri pta Technica, Inc.