System of systems approach for direction finding and geolocation

摘要

Systems and methods are provided herein that extend well-known direction finding (DF) and geolocation (GEO) concepts and approaches to a plurality of RF sensors to form a System of Systems (SoS) DF-GEO approach. The RF sensors may be collocated or spatial separated, and are able to exchange or share DF/GEO data. The SoS DF-GEO approach opportunistically leverages both on-board and off-board processing resources and DF-GEO measures for cooperative processing, situation awareness sharing, and performance optimization. The off-board processing resources and DF-GEO measures may be shared via networking. Thus, the SoS DF-GEO approach primarily bases measurements upon RSS or energy obtained from a one-antenna system or from a two-antenna system of a single RF sensor, as well as from other RF sensors via networking. By adopting the innovative SoS DF-GEO concept approach as described herein, optimized DF-GEO performance can be obtained by using the system of systems approach.

主权项

1. A method for locating an emitter of interest comprising:
generating a plurality of energy measures for signals received from the emitter of interest at a minimum of four different locations by at least first and second signal processing systems, wherein at least one of the first and second signal processing systems resides on a mobile platform in order to obtain measurement at the minimum of four different locations, wherein each signal processing system comprises an omnidirectional antenna and a directional antenna, and wherein the plurality of energy measures comprise first energy measures for signals received from the emitter of interest at an omnidirectional antenna and second energy measures for signals received from the emitter of interest at a directional antenna; receiving, at a geolocation system, the energy measures generated by the at least first and second signal processing systems and coordinates of the at least first and second signal processing systems corresponding to each energy measurement location, wherein the geolocation system is collocated with one of the at least first and second signal processing systems or at a location apart from the at least first and second signal processing systems; and computing directions of arrival (DOAs) for signals received at the minimum of four different locations based on a comparison of an antenna pattern of a corresponding directional antenna and the first and second energy measures; and computing, by the geolocation system, geolocation data for the emitter of interest using the plurality of energy measures generated by the at least first and second signal processing systems and DOAs.