Optimal Sensor Velocity Configuration for TDOA-FDOA Geolocation

This paper establishes the velocity orientation requirements for dual or multiple mobile sensors to achieve optimal localization of a stationary emitter, based on TDOA and FDOA measurements. In one approach, optimal velocities are obtained by maximizing the determinant of the Fisher Information Matrix (FIM). The other approach calls for minimizing the trace of the FIM inverse. The paper shows that for a given source-sensor position geometry, two opposite optimal sensor velocity configurations are possible. One way to apply the results of this paper is to deploy sensors onboard highly maneuvering platforms, which are able to rapidly align the platform velocities with those computed by one of the optimization approaches. This usually brings a significant increase in emitter localization accuracy even if the initial sensor-source position geometry is poor. A number of computer simulations are given in the paper, which confirms the paper's theoretical findings.