Nonlinear approach to aircraft tracking problem

A nonlinear approach to the problem of tracking a maneuvering aircraft is presented. A nonlinear aircraft maneuver model is proposed for state estimation as well as prediction. The nonlinear model describes planar trajectories. A geometric nonlinear filter (GNF) is presented. The results show a significant overall improvement over the extended Kalman filter (EKF) approach. The GNF was found to be stable in most cases where the EKF was not stable. For the stable cases, the tracking performance of the GNF compares favorably with the EKF. The GNF offers a substantial savings in computational time.