Radar tracking

Herman, S. and Moulin, P.M. A particle filtering approach to passive radar tracking and automatic target recognition IEEE Aerospace Conference Proceedings, 2002. Vol.4, pp 1789-41808, 9-16 March 2002. 

With the advent of radars capable of waveform agility, the design of optimal waveform libraries comes into question. The purpose of this section is to consider the design of such waveform libraries for radar tracking applications, from an information theoretic point of view. We note that waveform libraries will depend in general on the specific applications in which the systems are to be used. Airborne radars will require different libraries from ship-borne ones. Radars used in a tracking mode will require different optimal libraries than radars in a surveillance mode. 

A. Beam Rider Control System. With this system a ground radar tracks the target (such as an airplane), while the attacking missile climbs within the cone of a radar... 

B. Command Guidance System. With this system one radar tracks the target, while the other tracks the missile. Each radar feeds data into a computer, whereby steering commands are transmitted to the missile... 

Wasserfall was built entirely of steel because light alloys were in short supply, and the missile was big and heavy. It had to be launched vertically, and a primitive computer was required to ensure that the round was launched in the correct direction and gathered by the associated optical or radar tracking devices as quickly as possible. Beam-riding guidance was proposed originally, but the technology was not sufficiently advanced at the time a visual command system was therefore adopted initially, with radar planned to supersede it later... 

E. Radar Guidance System or Radio Detection and Guidance System was not sufficiently developed to be used on a wide scale. Radar tracking of the target was used for guiding the Wasserfall and Rheintochter missiles (Ref 3, p 227 and Ref 4, p 41)... 

The STCA system comprises a complex and proprietary algorithm. However, its main components are readily understood. Signals from ground radars track the aircraft in an airspace and on each cycle of the STCA system (every 4 seconds) track pairs for each pair of aircraft being monitored by the system are created. A coarse filter discards all those pairs for which the aircraft are simply too distant to conceivably constitute a potential hazard. The remaining pairs in potential conflict are passed to three fine filters a current proximity filter a linear prediction filter and a manoeuvre hazard filter. These check for whether the aircraft are already too close, whether they will lose separation... 

Rotman lens Microwave lens that forms multiple beams with the peaks fixed in space vs. frequency. RUV coordinates Natural phased-array tracking coordinates ahgned with range and direction cosines. RVCC coordinates Radar tracking coordinates ahgned with LOS, target velocity, and orthogonal to the... 

Correlation, or track correlation, is the process of combining one track with another track. Only one track retains its track number, and the other is dropped. This is in reference to radar tracking from one or more tracking systems watching an incoming enemy system of some type. 

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