Direct localization of emitters using widely spaced sensors in multipath environments

Abstract

We address the localization of sources with known waveforms in frequency-selective channels. Conventional localization by multilateration is an indirect approach that is suboptimal at lower SNR, and breaks down in the presence of multipath. Here, we propose a direct localization method (DLM) that exploits the sparsity of the emitters, as well as differences in the properties of the line of sight (LOS) versus multipath components of the signals received at the sensors. It is shown that the proposed method has superior performance relative to other known localization techniques and is robust to sensors with blocked LOS.