A Method Exploiting Compressive Sampling for Localization of Radio Frequency Emitters

This article presents a novel method for radio frequency (RF) emitter localization by using wideband spectrum sensors (WSSs) exploiting compressive sampling (CS). The method assumes that R receivers with known Cartesian coordinates in the plane are deployed in the area, where the transmitters are expected to be. By using a nonuniform sampling (NUS) scheme, each WSS allows one to relax the throughput requirements for the data acquisition and transmission tasks. The mathematical description followed by numerical analysis is presented. Then, hardware implementation for the receiver was realized, by using commercial off-the-shelf components. The obtained results from simulation tests are reported, and an experimental assessment of the proposed method is provided. The experimental results are compared with those obtained by applying the maximum likelihood (ML) algorithm on the samples acquired according to the Nyquist criteria. As a figure-of-merit, the compression ratio (CR) of the proposed NUS scheme was evaluated and it was experimentally obtained that even for CR = 64 the spectrum reconstruction is acceptable for being used in the ML algorithm.