A Kalman filtering approach to wideband scattering function estimation and tracking

Transmitted signal with high time bandwidth products tend to resolve multiple reflecting structural elements or highlights on the body that is being illuminated. This paper develops a Kalman filtering approach for estimating the position and velocity of the multiple highlights on a single body undergoing complex motions. An algorithm which tracks peak locations within the spreading function is derived via an extended or linearized Kalman filter. The ability of the Kalman filter to track kinematic properties of a multihighlight scatterer is related to the transmitted signal´s mean squared duration, and time-frequency content through the Cramer-Rao lower bound on estimation errors for time scale and delay.