An Adaptive IMM-UKF method for non-cooperative tracking of UAVs from radar data

Sammanfattning: With the expected growth of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) traffic in the coming years, the demand for UAV tracking solutions in the Air Traffic Control (ATC) industry has been incentivized. To ensure the safe integration of UAVs into airspace, Air Traffic Management (ATM) systems will need to provide a number of services such as UAV tracking. The Interacting Multiple Model Extended Kalman Filter (IMM-EKF) is an industry standard for aircraft tracking, but no such algorithm has been tried and tested for UAV tracking. This thesis aims to determine a suitable tracking algorithm for the specific case of non-cooperative tracking of UAVs from radar data. In non-cooperative tracking scenarios, we do not have any information regarding the UAV other than radar measurements indicating the target’s position. We investigate an Adaptive Interacting Multiple Model Unscented Kalman Filter (IMM-UKF) method with three different motion model combinations in addition to comparing a Cartesian vs. Spherical measurement model. A comparison of motion models shows that using a Constant Jerk (CJ) model to model target maneuvers in the IMM structure reduces the risk of filter divergence as compared to using a turn model, such as Constant Turn (CT) or Constant Angular Velocity (CAV). The CJ model is thus a suitable choice to have as one of the motion models in an IMM structure and works well in conjunction with two Constant Velocity (CV) models. We were not able to determine if the Spherical measurement model is better than the Cartesian measurement model in general. However, the Spherical measurement model improves the accuracy of the state estimate in some cases. Adaptive tuning of the system noise covariance Q and measurement noise covariance R does not improve the accuracy of the state estimate but it improves the filter robustness and consistency when the filter is incorrectly tuned. Based on our results, we believe that the adaptive IMM-UKF shows promise but that there is still room for improvement with regards to both the accuracy and consistency. However, we will need to perform extensive tests with real UAV radar data to draw concrete conclusions.