An Efficient Estimator for TDOA-Based Source Localization With Minimum Number of Sensors

In this letter, the problem of source localization using time difference of arrival is investigated. Then, a closed form two-stage solution is proposed based on estimation of the range nuisance parameter in the first stage and refinement of initial solution in the next stage. The proposed solution is shown analytically and verified by simulations to be an efficient estimate, which can attain the CRLB performance under mild Gaussian noise assumption. This method is able to locate the source with the minimum number of sensors required for N-dimensional localization. Numerical simulations demonstrate significant performance improvement of the proposed method compared with the state-of-the-art algorithms and corroborate the theoretical developments.