A new solution approach for the bearing only target tracking problem

Though the motivation for the initial researches on the topic had been military applications, target tracking problem has many practices in real life. In this paper, target tracking is used in the meaning of estimating the range, course and speed of the target moving on the constant route with constant speed. The inputs for the algorithm are the passive sonar measurements, that are bearings (line of sight angles), observed with known elapsed time between the measurements. These time durations between the measurements can either be the same which is the expected condition for a practical automatically tracking sonar array or can be all randomly distinct. The paper gives a problem definition in terms of objective function derivation, proposes a modification method for the Big Bang-Big Crunch Optimization algorithm and reports the simulation results.