Wide area multilateration using ADS-B transponder signals

In this paper, a method for precise tracking of aircrafts based on Time of Arrival (TOA) determination of transponder signals is presented. Target location via multilateration based on Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA) measurements is a well known powerful method. In recent time, methods of target location using direct TOA measurement processing without the indirection of generating TDOA measurements have been derived. The key to the TOA tracking is the usage of an extended target state containing the time of transmission (TOT) and an application of nonlinear estimation methods for the estimation of the system state including TOT. Field experiments investigate the performance of the TOA localization compared to the TDOA localization where the fusion of both algorithms shows the best results. A key benefit of the TOA processing is that a system is constructed with very low communication bandwidth requirements in the sensor network.