Tracking with range rate measurements: Turn rate estimation and particle filtering

In target tracking problems a combination of the constant velocity (CV) and constant turn (CT) motion models are suitable to describe the target evolution and hence for state estimation purposes. For the CT motion the turn rate value is required and needs to be estimated. The method here chooses to apply the range rate measurement to this purpose, which is generally very accurate and available in surveillance and tracking radars. It introduces a verification regarding the compatibility between the estimated velocity projection on the range direction and the range rate measurement. A disagreement indicates a change in the turn rate, which is treated by appropriated draws in a particle filter (PF) combined with a BLUE filter. Simulation results, based on values of RMS position and velocity errors, show that this new method is more effective in estimating the turn rate than the results in literature.