Tracking of multiple emitters through fusion of heterogeneous sensors on multiple UAS

Localization of multiple sources using passive sensors is a fundamental task encountered in various fields like wireless communication, radar, sonar, and seismology. This work focuses on the task of localizing and tracking multiple non-cooperative targets by a passive antenna array and an optical sensor. Each sensor system is mounted on individual UAS and obtains bearing measurements from objects, whereby the number of the latter is unknown. Furthermore, an imperfect detection of the optical sensor leads to false targets and clutter measurements. To localize and track, the imprecise but unique bearing data collected from the antenna array has to be correlated with the precise but ambiguous bearing data gained from the optical system. To avoid a computational complex data association an iterative approach is preferable, which only considers the sensor data from the actual time-step for an update of each target state. The problem is solved with a multi-target tracking filter.