Information Fusion of Airborne radar and ESM for maneuvering target tracking system based on IMM-BLUE

In order to make full use of measurement information provided by sensors on the aerial carriers and efficiently make maneuvering target tracking under complicated conditions, this paper studies tracking methods of joint maneuvering target by airborne radar and Electronic Support Measure (ESM). Based on Interacted Multiple Model-Blue Linear Unbiased Estimation (IMM-BLUE) algorithm, this paper well tracks maneuvering target by airborne radar-ESM data fusion and has designed target tracking algorithm for airborne radar in Doppler blind zone (DBZ) as well as proposes two tracking methods separately for measured value of data fitting amount in DBZ and single ESM. Simulation results show IMM-BLUE algorithm well advantages over Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) by far avoiding the defect of divergement from the latter. Compared with simulation results of single radar, the data fusion tracking of airborne radar and ESM further improves tracking accuracy. Performances of either curve-fitting method in DBZ or single ESM tracking prove validity of the two methods in this paper. Radar-ESM joint tracking technology discussed in this paper has solved the problems caused by sensor unicity and Doppler blind zone. Key-Words: Maneuvering target tracking, IMM-BULE, Information Fusion, DBZ, Airborne Radar, ESM