Geometric joint probabilistic data association approach to ballistic missile warhead tracking using FMCW radar seeker

Abstract

This study proposes a new ballistic missile warhead tracking algorithm for enhancing the anti-ballistic capability of a wideband frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) radar seeker. Under the assumption that the target has a single dominant scattering point, the existing FMCW radars usually adopt the peak tracking algorithm which tracks the scattering point with maximum power in frequency spectra in order to calculate its range/range rate information. However, this method is not applicable for ballistic target tracking using wideband FMCW with high range resolution. This is because the return echoes of ballistic target obtained from wideband FMCW radar seeker are generally represented by many scattering points and, moreover, the most significant scattering point often does not appear at the warhead section of concern. To overcome this limitation, an inventive data association scheme is newly devised by exploiting the geometric constraints. This constraints is derived from the observation that the geometric relation between the scattering points corresponding to the warhead and body sections tends to be roughly determined by the velocity vector of the ballistic missile. Since it could be used for evaluating association hypotheses, the proposed geometric data association tracking filter can drastically improve the warhead tracking performance in practice. Through computer simulations, the effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated.