Practical evaluation of TDoA, AoA and hybrid methods for geolocation of wireless transmitters

The increasing popularity of wireless services led to increased deployment of wireless systems worldwide that operate in adjacent frequency bands. The national regulatory bodies need to address the potential issues of wireless systems mutual interference (either accidental or deliberate) and guarantee their stakeholders efficiently policed national spectrum usage. One of the cornerstones in this aspect is the accurate and real-time geolocation of wireless transmitters using methods such as TDoA, AoA and/or hybrid ones. However, the practical implementation of a fully operable spectrum monitoring and wireless transmitters geolocation capable system is a challenging task. This paper introduces the world´s first nationwide spectrum monitoring system that combines TDoA sensors and AoA receivers in order to provision centralized monitoring and control of the spectrum utilization and spectrum intruders´ detection in the Republic of Macedonia. The system is subjected to empirical evaluations using controlled emissions of a known source of various wireless signals. The results showcase the vast potentials of the system in terms of geolocation accuracy of wireless transmitters.