Cooperative systems and methods for TDOA-based emitter location

摘要

Systems and methods that may be implemented to determine the location of an emitter of electromagnetic radiation having an unknown location, using a cooperative TDOA-based location methodology. The cooperative TDOA-based location methodology (e.g., such as TDOA/TDOA, TDOA/FDOA, etc.) may be implemented using at least one cooperative transmitter that transmits a cooperative electromagnetic (EM) signal from a known location that is received at multiple different EM sensing platforms that are also each of known location. The known geolocation of the cooperative transmitter may be used to resolve the signal arrival timing relationships between the different sensing platforms that is utilized to determine the location of another EM transmitter of unknown location.

主权项

1. A method of determining a time difference of arrival (TDOA) information for an electromagnetic (EM) signal of interest that is transmitted in an EM emissions environment, comprising:
providing multiple EM sensing platforms within the EM emissions environment, the EM emissions environment including the EM signal of interest, and the EM signal of interest having a center frequency and bandwidth; transmitting a cooperative EM signal from a source of known location simultaneously with the transmission of the EM signal of interest; simultaneously capturing each of the EM signal of interest and the cooperative EM signal at each of the multiple EM sensing platforms while the sensing platforms are positioned at different geolocations from each other; deriving a common clock for EM data captured at each given one of the EM sensing platforms based on one or more signal timing characteristics of the EM cooperative signal at the given EM sensing platform and based on the known location of the source of the EM cooperative signal and the known location of the given EM sensing platform at the same time the EM data is captured at each given one of the multiple EM sensing platforms; and determining the time difference of arrival (TDOA) information for the EM signal of interest between at least two of the multiple EM sensing platforms based on the common clock derived based on the one or more signal timing characteristics of the EM cooperative signal at each given one of the EM sensing platforms.