Softly constrained particle filter for digital terrain elevation data aided ground moving target tracking

Abstract

This paper presents Softly Terrain Constrained Particle Filter (STC-PF). STC-PF is designed to improve the performance of ground target tracking by applying the constraint that ground targets are constrained to the terrain surface. STC-PF is based on SIR PF, but the major difference is that STC-PF uses the elevation model. Due to the elevation model, knowledge of the horizontal position of a target enables us to infer the elevation of the target more precisely. Because STC-PF can reflect the uncertainty of DTED, STC-PF shows a smoother and less biased trajectory than SCKF in the numerical experiment. Moreover, MC simulation result shows that STC-PF is capable of keeping the track stable due to its large variance. © 2021, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Inc, AIAA. All rights reserved.