Profile Likelihood Estimator for Passive Scan-Based Emitter Localization

This paper is concerned with the geolocation of a scanning emitter from time of intercept measurements of the rotating emitter beam. The problem of estimating the emitter location is cast into a profile likelihood estimation framework by treating the unknown scan rate of the emitter as a nuisance parameter. A grid search technique is developed for initializing iterative profile likelihood estimation algorithms. The grid spacing is determined from an estimate of the Lipschitz constant of the profile likelihood cost function. Maxima of directional derivatives of the cost function are fitted to a Weibull distribution to estimate the Lipschitz constant. The performance of the profile likelihood estimator is illustrated with simulation examples.