Performance estimates of doppler tracking systems

Of the several existing techniques for the passive acoustic reconstruction of underwater target-sensor geometries, the procedure based upon the Doppler shift phenomenon has received considerable attention. A fundamental requirement for the design of any Doppler tracking system or algorithm is a measure of the optimal performance that may be expected for a given set of operating conditions. This paper describes the development and application of such a set of performance bounds. In particular, a computer simulation was constructed from the linearized, noiseless, Doppler constraint equations. The performance bounds were inferred from a study of the output of the model in response to errors in the input measurements. Of particular interest was the role played by the total geometry matrix in controlling system response to input errors. The format of the performance bound was a functional relationship which expresses the frequency and target location measurement accuracies required for specific target parameter (i.e., location and velocity) accuracies. The Doppler polar profile was introduced to add physical insight to the tracking process, and to cast the performance bounds into an operationally useable format.