Passive Ranging with a Team of Aircraft using Angle Only Tracks

This paper presents a passive-ranging algorithm with a team of aircraft operating with infrared search and track (IRST) systems. The angle-only track output from each aircraft is shared across other aircraft, and the passive ranging algorithm is developed. A nonlinear least squares problem is formulated with the associated angle-only tracks from each aircraft to estimate the target range. A heterogeneous angle-only track-to-track association algorithm is presented and a detailed fusion architecture is presented for multi-target angle-only track-to-track association. Simulations are carried out to check the robustness of the proposed algorithm for passive ranging.