A method for localization TDOA estimation based on signal‐level fusion and analysis

Abstract

AbstractPassive localization using time difference of arrival (TDOA) is one of the common methods for radiated source target localization, and its localization performance depends on the accuracy of TDOA estimation. In many localization scenarios, the signals of target are intricate and often contain multiple ones, so how to effectively extract the time difference parameters from them becomes a difficult problem. This letter proposes a signal‐level fusion method for TDOA estimation to address this problem. At the receiver terminal, multiple signals are fused to obtain their cross‐ambiguity function, so as to estimate the TDOA value for target localization. The effect of fused signals on the accuracy of TDOA estimation is analyzed and the concept of frequency depression is proposed. Simulation experiments verify that the estimation method with signal‐level fusion gets a higher accuracy of the TDOA value and a smaller position error in target localization.