Multistatic Target Localization Exploiting Multiple Transmitters with Imperfect Time Synchronization

This correspondence investigates the multistatic target localization problem, accounting for time offsets of transmitters and sensor position uncertainties. A maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) problem involving the target position, sensor positions and time offsets is formulated by directly using the original measurements. To solve the non-convex MLE problem, an efficient two-step semidefinite relaxation (SDR) method is proposed. Specifically, the SDR technique is employed to solve the MLE problem and then the solution is further refined by estimating the error term. Furthermore, it is analytically demonstrated that the proposed method can achieve the Cram´er-Rao lower bound (CRLB) under low-noise conditions. Simulation results validate the theoretical development and show that the performance of the proposed method outperforms existing algorithms