The influence of communication bandwidth on target tracking with angle only measurements from two platforms

A multi-platform angle-only tracking system combines the angular measuremen ts from distributed networked sensors in order to estimate the full kinemat ic target state. This paper investigates the effect of communication bandwi dth on track quality in a system which receives angle-only measurements fro m two networked sensors installed on two airborne moving platforms. The inv estigation is based on the Cramer-Rao lower bound of the mean-square range error for the case considered. The bound is derived for recursive estimator s with prior information and compared with two algorithms: (i) maximum like lihood estimation over a cumulative measurement set and (ii) extended Kalma n filter with triangulated range estimates. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.