Passive tracking using TDOA for super-low-altitude target

A novel near-space floating platform aided passive location method for super-low-altitude target using time difference of arrival(TDOA) is proposed. The new method uses a near-space floating platform as the baseline in the height to form a redundant location system consisting of several subsystems. Each subsystem can obtain a set of location results with ambiguity. After eliminating the ambiguity by the nearest matching, the new method can improve the location accuracy in the whole observed airspace by simplified weighted least square(SWLS) fusion. A better tracking performance can be achieved by treating the SWLS fusion location result as pseudo-linear measurement, and keeping the tracking through Kalman filter. Simulation results show that the proposed method comes to stabilization within 40s and has higher tracking precision than the SWLS method.