Error Analysis of a Localization Algorithm for Finite-Duration Events

This paper proposes and examines the performance of an algorithm used to locate a finite time-duration acoustic source that may have a small time-bandwidth product. The localization algorithm hypothesizes a source location and aligns the sensor signals by removing the propagation delay for that hypothesized location. The energy of the sum of the aligned signals is calculated and the hypothesized source location with the maximum energy is the estimate of the source position. The primary contribution of this paper is the development of the expression for the variance of localization error in any specified direction. The variance expression is validated through a comparison with Monte Carlo simulations