A Ballistic Filter for GPS and Accelerometer Measurements

This report extends the work of Andrew A. Thompson described in the report titled Ballistics Filtering, ARL-TR-4735, published in March 2009, by showing the process of realizing the ideas through a simulation. By providing a concrete example it is hoped other realizations of the ideas can be pursued with a reasonable effort. Ballistic Filtering describes the dynamic equations that can be used to form Extended Kalman Filters (EKF) for the estimation of a projectile's trajectory. The steps associated with initialization and implementing an EKF are demonstrated through a specific task. The performance of an EKF processing Global Positioning System (GPS) observations is compared to the performance of an EKF processing both GPS and axial accelerometer observations.
The original document contains color images.