Source localization using a moving receiver and noisy TOA measurements

• Give a new source position and period estimator using TOAs from a moving receiver.
• The new estimator considers the relative motion between the receiver and the source.
• The new method finds the signal period with higher accuracy than previous methods.
• The conditional CRLBs of the source position and signal period are derived.
• Sufficient conditions for the new method to reach the conditional CRLBs are provided.

This paper considers using a moving receiver to locate a stationary source that transmits periodically with an unknown period. The receiver records the time of arrivals (TOAs) of the intercepted signals for source localization. A new two-step localization algorithm is developed. Its first step ignores the signal propagation delay and identifies the signal period using existing period estimation techniques. Sufficient conditions for correctly relating the TOA measurements are established. The second step of the new algorithm jointly estimates the source position and the signal period using an iterative maximum likelihood estimator. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the newly proposed technique.