Passive means for single site radio location

• US 5,444,451 A
• Filed: 05/13/1994
• Issued: 08/22/1995
• Est. Priority Date: 06/29/1992
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Southwest Research Institute
• Original Assignee: Southwest Research Institute
• Inventors: Sonsteby, Allan G., Johnson, Richard L., Black, Q. Robert
• Primary Examiner(s): Issing, Gregory C.
• Application Number:
  US08/242,699
• Time in Patent Office: 466 Days
• Field of Search: 342/378, 342/387, 342/417, 342/445, 342/196, 342/421, 342/453, 364/569
• US Class Current: 342/453
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 3/46 using antennas spaced apart and measuring phase or time difference between signals therefrom, i.e. path-difference systems
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 3/782 Systems for determining direction or deviation from predetermined direction
• CPC Class Codes: G01S 3/808 using transducers spaced apart and measuring phase or time difference between signals therefrom, i.e. path-difference systems

Abstract

The invention described herein relates generally to the field of direction finding and source location. The invention has broad application in areas requiring superresolution spectral analysis. The invention described in the context of any array processing problem in which the location of a transmitter is to be determined at a single receiving site based on passive measurements of the propagation waveform. The invention exploits the information received by a pair of sensors to extract intersensor delay and interpath delay times in the presence of multipath propagation. Two sensors are used in order to normalize the effects of signal modulation. Combining the sensor pairs in groups, the direction-of-arrival may be determined for each signal from the intersensor delay times thus derived. The invention additionally provides for the estimation of transmitter location by using the intersensor and interpath delay times. The invention is applicable in the context of array data processing to a number of areas including sonar, broadcast, communication, radar and satellite signal formats.

Claims

1. A method of measuring the geographical location of a remote transmitter from a single receiver-site comprising the following steps:

(a) providing an array of signal sensors wherein the sensors are spatially separated to obtain a finite intersensor propagation delay time for transmitted signals incident upon the array and transmitted from a remote transmitter;

(b) obtaining sampled signals from substantially simultaneous measurements of transmitted signals received at the sensory array;

(c) determining the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) for the sampled signal at each sensor;

(d) considering the sensors in pairs and computing a normalized cross power spectrum using DFT for the sample signal acquired at each individual sensor;

(e) identifying the frequency bins of the normalized cross power spectrum which have magnitudes near unity;

(f) using the frequency bins of the normalized cross power spectrum which have magnitudes near unity to compute a spectral cross correlation matrix;

(g) determining by matrix evaluation the rank of said spectrum cross correlation matrix, eliminating a number of columns from the leftmost portion of the matrix equal to the rank of the spectral cross correlation matrix with the remaining matrix being a matrix representative of nullspace;

(h) forming the eigen spectrum using the nullspace matrix and a sensor array steering vector;

(i) searching for the maximum of said eigen spectrum which will result in an estimate of the intersensor and interpath delay times; and

(j) computing the geographic location of the remote transmitter using the intersensor and interpath delay time.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising the steps of:

(a) determining the azimuth/elevation angle of arrival (AOA) for each signal present in a multicomponent wavefield using the intersensor delay time;

(b) estimating the interpath delay time for each pair of coherent multipath signals present in a multicomponent wavefield using the intersensor delay times; and

(c) then determining the geographic location of the transmitter using the azimuth/elevation AOAs and the interpath delay times.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein:

(a) mixing with the transmitted signal noise which has a known or measured correlation matrix but which is uncorrelated with the transmitted signal to form a composite cross correlation eigen equation;

(b) isolating the noise component by solution of the composite cross correlation eigen equation;

(c) determining echo time delay resulting from transmitted signal reflections from ionospheric layers;

(d) providing an eigen spectrum method for determining the time difference for transmitted signal arrival at spatially separated sensors;

(e) through the use of the normalized cross power spectrum, determining the frequency components with near unity magnitude to be used for enhanced accuracy in estimating time delay, and

(f) determining interpath delay from a single sensor by observing a signal with known modulation characteristics.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein said sensors are arrayed to receive signals arriving from any direction in azimuth and elevation AOA.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein sensors in paired arrangement within the array have different times of arrival resultant from the transmitted signal, and said transmitted signal propagages by way of at least two paths including groundwave and skywave or skywave and a second skywave path dependent on ionospheric conditions.

6. The method of claim 5 wherein said eigen spectrum is defined for a frequency spectrum of a transmitted signal to enable determination of frequency dependent spatial relationships sufficient to resolve azimuth/elevation AOA for each constituent signal of a multicomponent wavefield.

7. The method of claim 1 wherein the said eigen spectrum is determined for a specified frequency spectrum of sufficient width to enable obtaining constituent time delays for each signal in a multicomponent wavefield.

8. The method of claim 7 wherein the remote transmitter is operated with sufficient bandwidth to permit a partitioning into sub-bands so that each sub-band enables the determination of constituents time delays for each component of a multicomponent wavefield.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein components of multicomponent wavefields are used to make multiple estimates of geographic locations of a remote transmitter, each estimate of location being based upon one sub-band of the total bandwidth.

10. A method of determining the location of a remote transmitter as indicated by azimuth and range to said transmitter measured from a receiving antenna array site, which comprises the steps of:

(a) determining at an antenna site the intersensor and interpath delay times of a signal transmitted from a remote transmitter;

(b) computing the azimuth AOA from the ground wave signal path using the intersensor and interpath delay times;

(c) computing the azimuth AOA of the skywave signal path using the intersensor and interpath delay times;

(d) determining the skywave reflection height from an ionospheric sounding;

(e) computing the ground range to the remote transmitter by combining said computed AOA of the skywave and said skywave reflection height;

(f) computing the azimuth of the remote transmitter using said computed groundwave AOA, said groundwave signal path and said skywave signal path; and

(g) determining the geographical location of the remote transmitter by combining the ground range and said azimuth of said remote transmitter.