A least square real time quality control routine for the North Warning Netted Radar System

Abstract : The ground surveillance radar group of the Radar and Space Division of DREO has a requirement to investigate the feasibility and propose a cost effective approach of correcting the Real Time Quality Control (RTQC) registration error problem of the North Warning System (NWS). The U.S. developed RTQC algorithm works poorly in northern Canadian radar sites. This is mainly caused by the deficiency of the RTQC algorithm to calculate properly the radar position bias when there is a low aircraft traffic in areas of overlapping radar coverage. This problem results in track ambiguity and in display of ghost tracks. In this report, a modification of the RTQC algorithm using least-square techniques is proposed. The proposed least-square RTQC (LS-RTQC) algorithm was tested with real recorded data from the NWS. The LS-RTQC algorithm was found to work efficiently on the NWS data in a sense that it works properly in a low aircraft traffic environment with a low computational complexity. The algorithm has been sent to the NORAD software support unit at Tyndall Air Force Base for testing.