This work presents a new description of the three-dimensional bearings-only tracking problem. A review of established approaches reveals that the common use of elevation and azimuth angles in the state or the measurement model can cause unrealistic error distributions and is not well-suited to Kalman filtering under certain relevant circumstances. It is furthermore shown that such methods immanently corrupt rotational invariance and thus let estimation performance rely on a fortunate choice of the inertial reference system. Based on these considerations, an alternative representation is derived that aims at eliminating the prior identified shortcomings. A corresponding tracking filter is designed and demonstrated to give equivalent or superior performance compared to usual approaches.
%0 Journal Article
%1 schmitt2016continuous
%A Schmitt, Lorenz
%A Fichter, Walter
%D 2016
%J Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics
%K 2016 ifr journal myown
%N 12
%P 2673--2682
%R 10.2514/1.G000362
%T Continuous Singularity Free Approach to the Three-Dimensional Bearings-Only Tracking Problem
%V 39
%X This work presents a new description of the three-dimensional bearings-only tracking problem. A review of established approaches reveals that the common use of elevation and azimuth angles in the state or the measurement model can cause unrealistic error distributions and is not well-suited to Kalman filtering under certain relevant circumstances. It is furthermore shown that such methods immanently corrupt rotational invariance and thus let estimation performance rely on a fortunate choice of the inertial reference system. Based on these considerations, an alternative representation is derived that aims at eliminating the prior identified shortcomings. A corresponding tracking filter is designed and demonstrated to give equivalent or superior performance compared to usual approaches.
@article{schmitt2016continuous,
abstract = {This work presents a new description of the three-dimensional bearings-only tracking problem. A review of established approaches reveals that the common use of elevation and azimuth angles in the state or the measurement model can cause unrealistic error distributions and is not well-suited to Kalman filtering under certain relevant circumstances. It is furthermore shown that such methods immanently corrupt rotational invariance and thus let estimation performance rely on a fortunate choice of the inertial reference system. Based on these considerations, an alternative representation is derived that aims at eliminating the prior identified shortcomings. A corresponding tracking filter is designed and demonstrated to give equivalent or superior performance compared to usual approaches.},
added-at = {2016-07-01T13:20:58.000+0200},
author = {Schmitt, Lorenz and Fichter, Walter},
biburl = {https://puma.ub.uni-stuttgart.de/bibtex/2c0e0ca6c25791ccf65d5a09b1c6ac452/lorenzschmitt},
doi = {10.2514/1.G000362},
interhash = {0c50d337c7315946c600b4a00fc14656},
intrahash = {c0e0ca6c25791ccf65d5a09b1c6ac452},
journal = {Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics},
keywords = {2016 ifr journal myown},
number = 12,
pages = {2673--2682},
timestamp = {2017-10-24T08:08:25.000+0200},
title = {Continuous Singularity Free Approach to the Three-Dimensional Bearings-Only Tracking Problem},
volume = 39,
year = 2016
}