Jack T Brooks

57989427, Aug 25, 1998

Apr 5, 1994

8/224024

Roy Danchick - Los Angeles CA
George E. Newnam - Fountain Valley CA
Jack E. Brooks - Los Angeles CA

TRW Inc. - Redondo Beach CA

G01S 1300

364516

An N-best feasible hypotheses multitarget tracking system for accurately detecting and tracking large numbers of closely spaced objects in a dense target environment in real time. The multitarget tracking system includes a two-dimensional focal-plane multitarget tracker for performing accurate single-sensor target track assembly of individual target data by directly generating N-best feasible hypotheses, a target typer for performing target typing and providing an initial estimate of each target's launch parameters, a launch parameter estimator for generating a target launch state vector and state error covariance matrix for each target from the assembled target track data, an optimal target data associator for performing multisensor state-to-state association of the target launch states, an optimal target data combiner for performing multisensor state-to-state fusion of the target launch states, a target state initializer for initializing an inertial target state vector and state error covariance matrix, and a target state estimator for recursively updating the inertial target track state vector and state error covariance matrix for each target.