Bearings-Only Target Motion Analysis via Instrumental Variable Estimation

This paper deals with the instrumental variable (IV) estimation for the problem of target motion analysis from bearing-only measurements (BO-TMA). By taking asymptotical analysis of the IV estimation, a systematic method for developing consistent IV estimate and the sufficient condition for its asymptotical normality are proposed. The asymptotical covariance of IV estimate is also derived explicitly which can be used to evaluate its performance. These results generalize the previous studies and enhance the application of the IV estimation in target tracking. Numerical examples are shown to verify the theoretical results.