Practical Optimization of TDoA Geo-Location

Wireless device localization is crucial in various applications, including security, search-and-rescue, and cyber radio-frequency (RF). This paper investigates Time-Difference-of-Arrival (TDoA) based localization methods, which are robust to low signal-to-noise ratios, fading, and multipath environments. Traditional TDoA-based localization techniques focus on two main issues: estimating the TDoA between different receivers and estimating emitter locations based on TDoA measurements. In this study, we introduce a novel direct localization method that departs from the traditional approach. Our technique models the received signal at each receiver with high precision, by accounting for hardware, channel, and environmental effects. In so doing, we formulate the localization problem as a maximum likelihood (ML) estimation problem based directly on the received signals from each receiver, thus bypassing the need for intermediate TDoA estimates. We demonstrate through simulations that our proposed direct localization approach significantly enhances the accuracy of localization estimation, hence making a substantial contribution to the field of TDoA-based localization techniques.