Doppler Bearing Tracking with Fusion from Heterogeneous Passive Sensors: ESM/EO and Acoustic

A heterogeneous acoustic and Electronic Support Measures (ESM)/Electro-Optic (EO) measurement fusion approach has recently been developed to address the Bearings-Only Tracking (BOT) problem, where target range can be inferred from the acoustic propagation delay. The target state is therefore observable even when the sensor platform is stationary. In this paper, we seek to extend this existing approach to the Doppler-Bearing Tracking (DBT) problem, in which the acoustic measurements include Doppler shifted frequencies on top of bearing measurements. Another recent study shows that the unknown acoustic propagation delay poses an additional challenge in the DBT. The Doppler shifted frequencies cannot be expressed analytically in the measurement model, and so a numerical approach should be employed. Thus, to address the DBT, we present the Out-Of-Sequence Measurement fusion from heterogeneous Acoustic and ESM/EO sensors (OOSM-AE-DBT) algorithm, which considers the effects of propagation delay in both time and Doppler shifted frequencies. Simulation tests are conducted for targets of various speeds to assess the performance of the algorithm and results are presented.