Multi-Reference Based Target Tracking for TDOA Systems

Abstract

In military and civilian applications, target localization is one of the crucial techniques to improve spatial awareness and enable location services without human intervention. However, in a noisy and cluttered environment, it is challenging to achieve high estimation accuracy due to inherent measurement error and clutter-reflected measurement via non-line of sight (NLOS) link between radar sensors and target. In this paper, we propose a multi-reference based target localization (MRTL) process to estimate the location of targets using time difference of arrival (TDOA) measurement. Compared to single reference TDOA systems where target localization may fail in some cases due to sensor-target geometry and TDOA error, the proposed MRTL can be a reliable and robust solution by utilizing multiple reference sensors simultaneously. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the performance of our proposed MRTL process.