A Robust Estimation Method of Ship Target Attitude

Angle Based on Radar Track

Cunwei Wei1,2,a ,Fajie Duan1, Xiankang Liu2,Jie Ren2,Ou Yang2 and Wenliang Lu2
1 State Key Laboratory of Precision Measuring Technology and Instruments; Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072,China;
2 No.701 Factory of PLA(N), Beijing 100015, China
E-maila:81697545@qq.com

Abstract—This paper presents a new method to extract the
characteristics of ship attitude angle by using radar track
information. Firstly, the ship motion model is established, and
then the track data is preprocessed. After that the motion state of
ship is estimated, and the curve is simulated by the M-estimator
method. Finally, the attitude angle of ship is estimated. The
experiment results show that the method is robust and estimate
attitude angle of ship effectively. Therefore it has a great
application value in engineering.
Keywords—Radar Track; Attitude angle; M-estimator;
II. ATTITUDE ANGLE EXTRACITON OF SHIP TARGET
A. Attitude Angle Estimation Model
The attitude angle of ship target can be simplified as the
angle between ship movement direction and the radar's line of
sight. The coordinates of ship target (distance: R, azimuth: A)
are known, that is obtained by radar tracking measurements.
The Cartesian coordinate system is established with the radar
position as the origin (Y axis is zero azimuth position, A is
azimuth angle, θ is the attitude angle), as shown below.

I. INTRODUCTION
The attitude angle characteristics of ship can be extracted
by using radar track information, which has important
significance for radar recognition[1-3] of ship target. However,
high range resolution profile (HRRP) of ship is sensitive to
attitude angle, that it is the core issue in high resolution
identification of wide-band radar. The sensitivity of ship target
attitude angle brings about the question, that is whether the
recognition of radar target[6] is feasible. Therefore, a effective
estimation method of ship attitude angle is the firstly important
for both estimating the length of ship and recognition based on
HRRP. Searching the corresponding template library by the
attitude angle estimated before, can reduce the matching space
and complexity of recognition. In the US Air Force Laboratory
organized the "system-oriented high-resolution radar automatic
target recognition" (SHARP)[2] plan, the identification system
uses attitude angle provided by radar tracking system to reduce
the range of template matching to less than 15 degrees, which
can effectively reduce matching operation of algorithm and
improve radar target recognition stability. Due to the
complexity of ship motion, coupled with radar signal
processing error. It is very important to extract attitude angle
based on radar track information. Because of the lack of
measured data, recognition methods [4-6] are focused in most
of literature.
In this paper, a new attitude angle extraction method is
proposed for the characteristics of ship target motion of the
high resolution radar. Firstly, the target motion estimation
model is established. Then, the measured track data is
preprocessed and the outlier data is removed. The M-estimator
algorithm is used for quadratic fitting, thus ensuring the
accuracy of motion estimation. The experiment based on a
large number of measured data shows that the algorithm has
high accuracy and is great in engineering.

Figure 1. Ship’s track in rectangular coordinate system
The Cartesian coordinates of ship target are expressed as
follows:
x = R sin A
(1)
y = R cos A
The radar track data of ship target curve fitting, in a small
amount of measurement period range, the use of quadratic
curve that:
y = ax 2 + bx + c (2)
In this paper, the least squares estimation can be used to
calculate the coefficients a, b, c of the quadratic curve, and the
dy
slope = 2ax + b is obtained by deriving the quadratic
dx
curve equation, This gives the tangential direction of the
quadratic curve equation, that is, the direction of ship
instantaneous movement or the opposite direction, in order to
calculate the angle between the direction of movement and the
direction of the radar line of sight angle, the slope of the

978-1-5386-3758-6/18/$31.00 2018
c IEEE 2160
quadratic curve after the tangent, and can get the angle with the If the following conditions are met, the track is stable and
x-axis, as follows: judged as stability state:

α = arctan(
dy
) (3) φ N − φ1 ≤ TH Angle (11)
dx
The projection of tangent direction of the quadratic curve in where TH Angle is threshold of the course angle change.
the horizontal and vertical directions can be expressed by:
cos(α ) ࠊ sin(α ) , the estimate of ship attitude angle can be III. TRACK DATA PREPROCESSING
expressed as follows: Practice and statistical theory show that, even if the high-
precision radar equipment, the original sampling data will be
sin( A) cos(α ) + cos( A) sin(α )
θˆ(t ) = cos −1 2 2 2 2 (4) affected by a variety of accidental factors. Therefore the
sin( A) + cos( A) sin(α ) + cos( β ) sampling data often contains 1% -2% random error, sometimes
where $ is the azimuth angle, so the actual attitude up to 10% -20% of the data distortion, in the engineering data
processing field these datas are known as the outliers or
angle θ ( θ ∈ > @ ) is:
D
abnormal points. In the practical engineering application, how
to remove the dynamic measurement data quickly and
­ ˆ π accurately is one of the urgent problems to be solved. There are
° θ (t ) θˆ(t ) ∈ [0, ] a variety of algorithms such as: polynomial filtering, kalman
θ (t ) = ® 2 (5)
π and other algorithms. However, due to the high complexity of
°π − θˆ(t ) θˆ(t ) ∈ [ , π ] the algorithm. This paper presents a fast and effective
¯ 2 algorithm for outliers.
Let x (i ), y (i ) be the position information of ship target,
B. Ship target motion state estimation t (i ) be the time information, and i = 1,..., N denote the
Find the rate of azimuth change˖ number of points. Calculate the speed of each segment:
N −1
FW = ¦ Ai +1 − Ai / N (6)
i =1 >[L +  − [L @ + >\L +  − \L @ (12)
6SHHG L =
give the indicator function of azimuth: WL +  − WL 
­° $L +  − $L ≥ WK): × ): The average speed is recorded as M _ Speed :
5L = ® (7) N −1
°̄ $L +  − $L < WK): × ): ¦ Speed i − max(Speed i )
M _ Speed = i =1 (13)
if N −2
¦R i > thNUM (8) That is, after removing the maximum speed range to obtain the
average speed, which can inhibit the role of part of the wild
It is judged as disorder state, where thFW is the set azimuth value. If the following formula is satisfied, the point i + 1 is
threshold, thNUM is the threshold for exception. considered as outlier:

Set course to be φ , The target position at time t Speed i > th × M _ Speed

(14)
is ( X 1 , Y1 ) and at time t − Δt is ( X 2 , Y2 ) , the general Speed i +1 > th × M _ Speed
direction of ship target movement is calculated as or
(ΔX , ΔY ) ,it is known that the angle between the direction of Speed i > th × M _ Speed
ship target movement and the x-axis is α ,the course is: (15)
Speed i > Speed R ( i −1)
­ 90 − α ΔX ≥ 0, ΔY > 0 where th is the multiple of the speed threshold. Where
° 90 + α ΔX > 0, ΔY ≤ 0
°
φ (t ) = ® (9) 6SHHG 5L −  =
>[L +  − [L − @ + >\L +  − \L − @ (16)
°270 − α ΔX ≤ 0, ΔY < 0 WL +  − WL − 
°¯270 + α ΔX < 0, ΔY ≥ 0 update the i ǃ i + 1 ǃ i + 2 speed and average speed:

According to the calculation of the course φ , statistical >[L +  − [L @ + >\L +  − \L @ (17)

changes, if the following conditions are met, it is judged as a 6SHHG L = 6SHHG L + =
WL +  − WL 
maneuvering state: N −1

¦ Speed i − max(Speed i )
φ N − φ1 > TH Angle (10) M _ Speed = i =1 (18)
N −2
The method has a good effect on the isolated point.

2018 13th IEEE Conference on Industrial Electronics and Applications (ICIEA) 2161
IV. ROBUST ESTIMATION METHOD㸸M-ESTIMATORS
Ship motion curve parameters can be estimated by the LSM -36.6
(least squares method), the method is unstable when there is
error data or large error. In order to reduce the error and the -36.8

effect of the outliers, the M-estimator algorithm is used to

improve the accuracy of the estimation parameters. M-estimate -37

satisfies the following formula:

Y
-37.2

n
min ¦ ρ ( xi , w)
-37.4
(19)
i =1 -37.6

Where the ρ ( xi , w) function is symmetric, positive -37.8

56.6 56.7 56.8 56.9 57 57.1 57.2 57.3
definite function, satisfying the minimum value at zero. X

In this paper, the weighted LSM is used, that Figure 4. The radar track of ship target in maneuvering state
2
is ρ ( xi , w) = wi ri ,where ri is the residual, σ is the
Figure 2 is a ship motion track curve fitting and attitude
standard deviation of the estimated error, and the weight
w satisfies the following equation: angle estimation schematic diagram. θ is the defined as attitude
angle, that is, the angle between ship movement direction and
radar's line of sight. HRRP of ship target is unstable in different
 attitude angle, therefore, it is necessary to consider the problem
­ 1 | ri |≤ σ of ship target recognition by analyzing attitude angle, and to
°° σ estimate the attitude angle of ship target to the recognition
wi = ® σ <| ri |≤ 3σ (20) performance accurately. The movement of ship target, is
complex and unstable, therefore it is necessary to automatically
° | ri | determine the movement state of the ship's target, as so to
°¯ 0 3σ <| ri | improve the credibility of the attitude estimation. Figure 3 and
Figure 4 are the disorder and maneuvering states of radar ship
target. Due to the hysteresis and instability of the track,
V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS estimates of such attitude angles tend to be more erroneous,
accordingly the state of ship target is conducive to improving
the reliability of attitude angle.
In this paper, more than 1600 sets of merchant ships
measured data collected by a kind of wide-band radar are used
to test the performance of the algorithm. The angle reported by
AIS (Automatic Identification System) is considered as true
data. The error of magnitude is defined as the absolute value of
the difference between the attitude angle and the true value.
Table I. Comparison of Attitude Angle Performance
Attitude angle Mean / (degrees) Variance / (degrees)
 All data 6.12 10.97
Figure 2. Attitude Angle Estimation in stability state Eliminate disorder and
3.06 2.98
-9.8 maneuvering tack
-10

-10.2 From the data recorded in Table I, it reveals that the error
-10.4 and the mean value of the attitude estimation are about 3
-10.6 degrees in the removal of the track disorder and the
-10.8 maneuvering condition.
Y

-11

-11.2
VI. CONCLUSION
-11.4
This paper presents a new method to extract the attitude
-11.6
angle of ship based on radar track. The method can estimate the
-11.8
28.6 28.7 28.8 28.9 29 29.1 29.2 29.3 29.4 29.5 state of ship motion and the attitude angle. Through estimated
attitude angle, it is the prerequisite and the primary link of
X

Figure 3. The radar track of ship target in disorder state radar ship recognition, which is of great significance to radar
ship recognition. The method is simple, practical, accurate, and
has great robustness and engineering application value.

2162 2018 13th IEEE Conference on Industrial Electronics and Applications (ICIEA)
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