An Efficient Weighted Least Squares Estimator for Elliptic Localization in Distributed MIMO Radars

Elliptic localization is an active range-based positioning technique that employs multiple transmitter-receiver pairs, each of which is able to provide separate bistatic range (BR) measurement. In this letter, an algebraic closed-form method for locating a single target from BR measurements using a distributed multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar system is proposed. First, a set of linear equations is established by eliminating the nuisance parameters, and then, a weighted least squares estimator is employed to obtain the target position estimate. To refine the localization performance, the error in the initial solution is estimated in the sequence. The proposed method is shown analytically and corroborated by simulations to be an approximately unbiased estimation, which is able to reach the Cramer-Rao lower bound accuracy under mild noise conditions. Numerical simulations demonstrate the superiority of this algorithm over the existing methods.