Multistatic sonar tracking

Multistatic active sonar has significant potential for littoral surveillance. This paper describes a multistatic tracking algorithm, and provides performance analysis with both simulated and real multistatic sonar data. We find that sensor fusion and target tracking provided significant value added in the sonar processing chain. In particular, we are able to drastically reduce the number of objects that an operator must contend with, both by removing large numbers of false contacts as well as by associating true contacts and establishing tracks on moving targets and fixed clutter points. The association of contacts allows for recursive filtering algorithms to process kinematic measurements and provides localization and velocity information with much smaller errors than are present in multistatic contact data.