Reentry vehicle tracking problem

An Adaptive Extended Range Kalman-Bucy Filter is presented as a solution to the radar, reentry vehicle tracking problem. Both a seven state adaptive filter and a six state nonadaptive filter are evaluated using a computer simulation. The convergence of the predicted miss-distance for an unguided-after-launch interceptor and a fixed intercept altitude is examined. The filter measurements consist of direct radar measurements and measurements derived from the radar measurements. Estimates of the derived measurement noise are presented. The filtering equations are solved in polar coordinates and they include the components of the range vector and velocity vector of the reentry vehicle.