Hughes Aircraft Company

John B Pearson, Iii

Mark I Landau

Laurence E Broniwitz

A monopulse radar tracking system is disclosed employing four tracking channels, one for each of range, velocity, azimuth and elevation. The two angle channels are referenced directly to antenna coordinates. Each channel is mechanized by a stored program in a digital computer, and the mechanization employs Kalman filtering with gain factors continually optimized for measured signal-to-noise ratios. Angular rate commands for the antennas are obtained by passing pointing error estimates from the angle channels through a compensator for antenna motion and adding line-of-sight rate estimates from the angle filter channels. Cross-coupling between channels is provided, and each channel is aided by outputs from an inertial navigation platform. Preaveraging of discriminants received between computational cycles is provided.

Tracking system utilizing Kalman filter concepts

A pulse-doppler radar tracking system is disclosed employing four filter channels for tracking range, velocity, azimuth and elevation. Each channel is mechanized in a Kalman filter form by a stored program in a digital computer. The range channel estimates target range, R.sub.TPR, range rate, V.sub.TPV and acceleration a.sub.TPV from one of many received signal frequency spectra at multiples of the pulse repetition frequency (PRF). Once error in the range rate estimate, V.sub.TPR, is within a velocity corresponding to .lambda. PRF/4, the velocity channel is reinitialized in its estimate of target velocity, V.sub.TPV, with a corrected velocity computed from the less accurate but unambiguous estimate of velocity, V.sub.TPR, and the ambiguous estimate of velocity, V.sub.TPV.

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Santa Monica, CA, United States of America

John B Pearson, Iii