Ellipsoidal gating for an airborne track while scan radar

Abstract

In an airborne surveillance radar, tracking in the presence of clutter and multiple targets requires that proper observations (plots) be assigned to each target track by comparing them with the corresponding predicted target positions. This paper discusses the solution used to capture low as well as high maneuvering targets and also to control the false correlations of tracks with the observations, using additional parameters from the radar such as signal strength and the Doppler information. A track-oriented wild maneuvering gate shape is suggested for capturing highly maneuvering targets, up to 8g. Once a proper observation-to-track pairing is achieved, filtering and prediction methods are used to give the best estimates of the target kinematic quantities such as position, velocity and acceleration. The algorithms suggested here are most applicable to airborne track-while-scan (TWS) radars, which have low data update rate.