On α-β target tracking initiation

We develop an efficient procedure to initialize the target tracker which brings the track from an initial fast rate, through an intermediate rate and into the steady state rate. α-β parameters for a first order approximation to the Kalman process are developed using the least squares method. The target tracking problem of the Benchmark Challenge is studied for the selection of intermediate track rate as well as the number intermediate samples. A comparison of the error covariance is made between the first order linear α-β gain selection and the Kalman processes. It is shown that a performance delay of a few samples results when using the first order α-β gain selection process compared to the Kalman process