Improved transmitter localization through incorporation of phase information

Localization of unknown radio frequency (RF) transmitters is useful for a variety of DSP applications such as clutter cancelation, cognitive radio, cognitive radar, bistatic and multistatic radar. Current methods for localization include triangulation through amplitude and time of arrival measurements. These methods require optimization over a continuous searchable surface to determine the optimal transmitter location estimate, leading to large computational complexity. This paper demonstrates a method that reduces this continuous space to a discrete set of points through the use of phase information. By employing the phase information and discrete domain search, the optimization process for localization significantly reduces required computational complexity. Additionally, parallel processing is exploited to further reduce the computation time. Simulations are conducted to compare the performances and complexities of traditional methods and the proposed discrete domain processing method incorporating phase information. Limitations of this technique and areas for future work are also discussed.