Error analysis in direction and position finding

摘要

The invention relates to analysing clusters of bearings (A, B, C and D) taken of distant sources by an array of direction finding stations. Each bearing has an error +/-E and a triangulation process is used to fix the position of the sources. A combination of bearings are taken one each from the stations. Each bearing of the combination is taken in turn as a spoke (30) directed at a source. The triangulation process generates a bar (31, 32, 33) of intersection points along the spoke for each other bearing of the combination, each bar corresponding to the error +/-E of each other bearing. The number of overlaps between pairs of bars along a spoke is total led to give a spoke score. The spoke scores for all spokes of the combination is summed to form a fix confidence score for a source which may be associated with the combination, or cluster, of bearings. Methods are also provided for rejecting redundant fixes associated with subsets of bearings within a cluster. IMAGE