Throwing Down The Gauntlet: A Discussion Of Techniques For Bounding Advanced Tracking Algorithm Performance

For many applications of radar and sensor based filtering, simulations can not represent the sole estimate of performance, provide points where threats become engagable, or determine when to use weapons' platform based sensors effectively in an engagement, etc... No significant advances have been proposed to analytically characterize performance or at least bound performance of the Kalman filter other than the use of simple two or three state constant gain filters. This paper suggests methods for characterizing filter algorithms that can be used to bound the advanced tracking algorithms that are used in a single sensor or multi-sensor environment