Underwater target bearing only tracking based on first order divided difference filter

The passive sonar based target tracking is of great importance in practical applications. In underwater bearings only target tracking research, the traditional extended Kalman filtering method uses Tarlor expansion to achieve the system nonlinear terms linearization, and it leads to a complicated computing time and singularity problems. This paper presents a method based on the First Order Divided Differential Filter (DDF1) algorithm for solving the problem. The DDF1 is derived based on polynomial approximations obtained with multidimensional Stirling interpolation formula, the implementation is significantly simpler because of no derivatives is required. The results of simulation and consistency test showed that the proposed algorithm has high tracking precision and tracking performance compared with the traditional EKF method under the same simulation conditions.