Maneuver target tracking with acceleration estimation using target past positions

In the air traffic control system, the α-β filter and the Kalman filter have been employed for real-time digital tracking. It is desirable for multiple-target tracking to be small calculating burdens. Non-maneuvering target can be accurately tracked with a constant velocity filter, however maneuvering target might be missed due to the large tracking errors. For maneuvering target tracking, some acceleration estimation methods such as the Interacting Multiple Model(IMM) tracking and the Two-Stage Kalman filter have been proposed. However their calculation requirements might be large. In this paper, we propose the α-β filter for a maneuvering target using acceleration estimation from the target past positions in order to obtain both good maneuver following capability and small computational requirements. We use simple target dynamic models for computer simulation, and show the effectiveness of the proposed filter in comparison with the conventional methods. We also evaluate the quality of the proposed acceleration estimation method.