A method of multi-target bearings-only association and location with two platforms

It is not easy for a single passive platform to realize target location by just bearings-only measurements, unless it carries a time-consuming laborious maneuvering. By contrast, with two platforms we could simply achieve accurate target location through triangulation approach without the need of platform maneuvering. However, this two-platform approach introduces an inter-platform association problem in multi-target scenarios, that is, one should recognize and exclude the false targets generated from wrongly paired bearings. To solve this, in this paper, a target motion analysis (TMA) based approach is proposed. Through a pre-TMA of all possible targets, the method calculates the confidence coefficients of all possible targets for recognition (real or false), which are then used to associate inter-platform bearings and select real targets. Simulation verification is performed through using Monte Carlo technique. The result demonstrates that the proposed method can achieve accurate inter-platform multi-target data association and multi-target location.