Analysis of Target Velocity and Position Estimation via Doppler-Shift Measurements

This paper outlines the problem of doppler-based target position and velocity estimation using a sensor network. The minimum number of doppler shift measurements at distinct generic sensor positions to have a finite number of solutions, and later, a unique solution for the unknown target position and velocity is stated analytically, for the case when no measurement noise is present. Furthermore, we study the same problem where not only doppler shift measurements are collected, but also other types of measurements are available, e.g. bearing or distance to the target from each of the sensors. Subsequently, allowing nonzero measurement noise, we present an optimization method to estimate the position and the velocity of the target. An illustrative example is presented to show the validity of the analysis and the performance of the estimation method proposed. Some concluding remarks and future work directions are presented in the end.