Modular Filter and Source-Management Upgrade of RADAC

In an upgrade of the Range Data Acquisition Computer (RADAC) software, a modular software object library was developed to implement required functionality for filtering of flight-vehicle- tracking data and management of tracking-data sources. (The RADAC software is used to process flight-vehicle metric data for real-time display in the Wallops Flight Facility Range Control Center and Mobile Control Center. This software is part of the Range Control/Range Safety System used to contain impacts of debris from flightvehicle operations.) The library includes implementations of tracking-data-editing and -filtering techniques that can be readily found in the literature and was constructed to facilitate future incorporation of implementations of other, more-exotic filtering techniques. A pragmatic technique is used to maintain statistics on differences between measurements and estimates of positions in order to compute a figure of merit for each radar, Global- Positioning- System, or inertial-navigation-system source of tracking data. An automatic source-qualification technique is implemented to enable optional replacement of a preexisting manual data-qualification function. The library was written in the C++ language and was designed to be hosted within an application program running on virtually any computing platform.