Information from a passive linear array sensor is related to the conic angle formed by a target and the sensor in three-dimensional (3D) space so that the target localization system using the sensor should be also designed in 3D space. This paper presents an observability study of a passive target localization system created using conic angle information. The study includes the analysis of the sensor maneuver requirement needed to achieve system observability and simulations to demonstrate the results of the analytic scheme. The proposed sensor maneuver requirements satisfy the system observability conditions by using the local linearization approach of the Fisher information matrix. It is also shown that this requirement can be mitigated for special cases in which the depth difference between the sensor and the target is given. Using the simulation, it is shown that sensors following the proposed scheme are able to obtain meaningful information that can be used to estimate 3D target states.
Keywords: observability analysis; passive linear array sensor; passive target localization; target tracking.