Date of Award

12-1992

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Electrical Engineering

Department

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

First Advisor

Peter Maybeck, PhD

Abstract

The Air Force Institute of Technology (AFIT) has been involved in developing Kalman Filter trackers for airborne targets for the last 14 years. The goal of this particular thesis was to track a ballistic missile in the boost phase at ranges up to 2000 km, in order to control a high energy laser weapon designed to destroy the target The filter developed combined an existing 'FLIR' filter, which estimated location of the plume intensity centroid based on measurements from a forward looking infrared sensor (FLIR), and an existing center-of-mass filter, which estimated the offset between the plume and missile center-of-mass based on measurements from low-energy laser reflections. In addition, the new filter modeled the oscillation of the rocket plume with respect to the missile hardbody, known as the pogo affect, in the hopes of improving overall tracking performance. Filter performance is analyzed through use of Monte Carlo simulation software developed at AFIT. This thesis also performed observability tests on various filter configurations in order to gain insight into observability problems identified during earlier research. Observability of states is measured through the use of both stochastic observability testing and Monte Carlo analysis of the filter models using the Multimode Simulation for Optimal Filter Evaluation (MSOFE) software.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-GE-ENG-92D-09

DTIC Accession Number

ADA258899

Comments

The author's Vita page is omitted.

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