3D RF Emitter Location Estimation

This paper describes a novel approach of a robust and efficient 3D location estimation technique for non-cooperative, active or passive RF emitters in a noisy environment with two or more arbitrary shaped arrays. Each array can provide precise frequency, direction of arrival (DOA) estimation and time of - arrival (TOA) estimation for the far field RF emitters. For an M-element array, the DOA estimator can adaptively estimate and track up to 2/3M independent emitters. We then apply the TDOA estimation and adaptive tracking algorithms to adaptive position finding and tracking involving one or two plane waves impinging on two synchronized uniform circular arrays, in the presence of uncorrelated receiver noise. Matlab simulations for mobile RF emitters location estimation are presented and discussed. The algorithms have been implemented to utilize an 8-element uniform circular array that operates at 5.8GHz. Two identical arrays have been used for locating and tracking two fixed or/and mobile RF emitters.. Test results show that the proposed system can achieve accuracy within 6 meters and resolution about 25 meters with the 8-element circular array at a distance of 10 km.