Noise adaptive fading Kalman filter for free-space laser communication beacon tracking

We proposed a prediction algorithm for laser communication pointing, acquisition, and tracking (PAT) subsystems in order to further improve PAT accuracy and reduce the effect of processing delay. In terms of this prediction algorithm, a fading Kalman filter is employed, with the observation noise obtained by the gray value distribution of the laser images. Moreover, to better fit the dynamics of a laser target, the two-stage dynamic model has been chosen as the state transition model for Kalman filtering. In addition, the two-stage dynamic model has been modified by accommodating its form to a change of time lag, thereby compensating the effect of time delay. A series of horizontal path (17 km) experiments under different atmospheric conditions were conducted in the fields. According to the experimental results, the algorithm we proposed could effectively reduce the tracking error and improve pointing accuracy.