Efficient direct position determination of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing signals

The authors present an efficient method for positioning of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signals. The method, called direct position determination (DPD), enables one to determine the emitter position in a single search operation. In formerly published articles on DPD, the signal was assumed to be a narrowband Gaussian source, which was subjected to a rather simple flat-fading channel model. Here, the authors extend the DPD algorithm to handle the OFDM signals that propagate through a frequency-selective channel, and derive the least squares estimator (LSE) for the problem. In addition, the authors present a method for a fine 2D position estimation, which enables one to reduce the DPD computational complexity without compromising on its estimation accuracy.