A kinematic model of route-based target tracking: Direct discrete-time form

In air traffic control (ATC), aerial vehicles normally travel within scheduled route channels with certain probabilities. Exploitation of the probability-constrained route information intuitively will lead to enhancement of tracking accuracy and tracking continuity. This paper presents an ATC tracking approach by incorporating such information to improve the estimation performance accordingly. First, a probability-constrained dynamic model for straight-line motion is proposed. Via the noise decoupling technique, an optimal estimator based on the constructed model is then derived. Finally, the route-based tracking approach is assessed on simple ATC example and simulation results indicate that the proposed approach significantly improved the tracking performance by comparison with the commonly used ones.