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Real-Time Drag Determination for Kwajalein Missile Range (KMR) Tracking…

Award Information

Agency:
Department of Defense 		Branch:
Army 		Award ID:
20684 		Program Year/Program:
1994 / SBIR
Agency Tracking Number:
20684 		Solicitation Year:
N/A 		Solicitation Topic Code:
N/A 		Solicitation Number:
N/A
Small Business Information
Toyon Research Corporation
6800 Cortona Drive Goleta, CA 93117-3021
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Woman-Owned: No
Minority-Owned: No
HUBZone-Owned: No
 
Phase 2
Fiscal Year: 1994
Title: Real-Time Drag Determination for Kwajalein Missile Range (KMR) Tracking Development
Agency / Branch: DOD / ARMY
Contract: N/A
Award Amount: $462,500.00
 

Abstract:

Although the wideband, narrow beam radars at KMR are capable of tracking well-behaved targets during reentry, the radars do not reliably maintain track on targets whose drag profiles deviate significantly from a priori predictions. The objective of this effort is to determine the feasibility of augmenting existing tracking filters for the KMR radars to allow real-time computation, correction, ad prediction of reentry drag experienced by objects in track. The existing KMR track filters attempt to compensate for drag excursions by increasing the process noise when predictions are observed to deviate from the measurements. Rather than simply increase the process noise, our proposed approach is to use the observed deviations between the predicted and observed measurements to modify/improve on our a priori estimate of vehicle drag profile. Our approach can be described as one of using drag as an additional state variable which is estimated in real time using the predictor/corrector processes of Kalman filtering. A digital simulation will be used to refine our new algorithm and to compare its performance with the existing KMR track filters for a wide spectrum of drag profiles. Feasibility of the revised tracker will be evaluated in terms of its ease of implementation in the existing rel-time programs of the KMR radars, and the ability of the existing computing hardware to absorb the additional computational load.

Principal Investigator:

A. Vincent Mrstik
8059686787

Business Contact:

Small Business Information at Submission:

Toyon Research Corp
Suite A, 75 Aero Camino Goleta, CA 93117

EIN/Tax ID:
DUNS: N/A
Number of Employees:
Woman-Owned: No
Minority-Owned: No
HUBZone-Owned: No