Kalman filtering techniques applied to airborne direction-finding and emitter location

Abstract

The objective of the analytical study was to develop an optimal emitter location algorithm using Kalman filtering techniques to filter emitter bearing angles-of-arrival information in a airborne, multi-emitter environment. Since emitter and aircraft navigation data were sampled at discrete time intervals, discrete sequential estimation techniques were utilized within a software computer program which initially sorted data, filtered emitter bearing angles-of-arrival to obtain optimal estimates, and computed emitter positions in latitude/longitude coordinates using various emitter locations algorithms. An error analysis was performed on the emitter location algorithms to determine relative accuracy of the different techniques. Extended Kalman filtering was also considered as an alternate approach to the emitter location algorithm.