Geolocation of a known altitude object from TDOA and FDOA measurements

Abstract

Most satellite systems for locating an object on Earth use only time difference of arrival (TDOA) measurements. When there are relative motions between an emitter and receivers, frequency difference of arrival (FDOA) measurements can be used as well. Often, the altitude of an object is known (it is zero, for example) or can be measured with an altimeter. Two sets of geolocation solutions are proposed which exploit the altitude constraint to improve the localization accuracy. One is for TDOAs alone and the other for the combination of TDOA and FDOA measurements. The additional complexity by imposing the constraint is a one-dimensional Newton's search and the rooting of a polynomial. The covariance matrices of the new estimators are derived under a small measurement noise assumption and shown to attain the constrained Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB). When there is a bias error in the assumed altitude, using the altitude constraint will introduce a bias to the solution. Since applying the constraint decreases the variance, there is a tradeoff between variance and bias in the mean square error (MSE). The maximum allowable altitude error such that the constraint solution will remain superior to the unconstraint is given. Simulation results are included to corroborate the theoretical development.