Mobile emitter geolocation and tracking using correlated time difference of arrival measurements

This paper presents an effective recursive tracking method for the single mobile emitter using correlated TDOA measurements. In multiple-sensor environment the time difference of arrival (TDOA) measurements are correlated. We consider only the case of single emitter tracking without data association issues, e.g., no missed detection or false measurements. We describe a scenario of three static receivers with synchronous TDOA measurements. In this situation, the TDOA measurements are correlated. We propose a de-correlated TDOA measurement structure for optimal estimation. Each TDOA measurement defines a hyperbola-like region, representing possible emitter locations. This likelihood function is approximated via Gaussian mixture, making the algorithm a dynamic bank of variable number of Kalman filters. The performance is evaluated using Monte Carlo simulations, and compared with the Cramer-Rao Lower Bound (CRLB).