Engineering Commons^™

Estimating Characteristics Of A Maneuvering Reentry Vehicle Observed By Multiple Sensors, Evan M. Brooks

Theses and Dissertations

Post flight analysis of ballistic missile reentry vehicles is an area of focus for the U.S. Government, especially for those involved in ballistic missile defense. Typically, this analysis incorporates either a model-driven least squares filter or a data-following Kalman filter. The research performed here developed a filter that attempts to integrate the strengths of both filters. A least squares filter operates on observation data collected during exoatmospheric free flight and a Kalman filter is used to analyze data collected lower in the atmosphere, where potential maneuvers could be performed. Additionally, the filter was written to incorporate data from multiple sensors. …