Wide-Area Multistatic Sonar Tracking

Abstract

Sensors with poor bearing resolution pose a significant challenge for multi-target tracking, as cross-range error becomes very large at long ranges. While multi-sensor fusion provides benefit towards higher-precision tracking, there are two key difficulties to confront. The first is to address measurement association ambiguities, which we address via advanced multiple-hypothesis tracking. The second is to perform robust track initialization and filtering, which we achieve via a two-point filter initialization approach followed by (sequential) extended Kalman filtering. In the specific context of active sonar tracking, the impact of finite sound speed poses an additional challenge. Addressing this requires a generalized MHT solution that accounts for measurement-specific time stamps and allows for out-of-sequence measurement processing. The enhancements discussed in this paper yield a robust capability for wide-area multistatic sonar tracking.