On the Accuracy Analysis of Airborne Techniques for Passively Locating Electromagnetic Emitters

Abstract

Discussion of methods of locating electromagnetic emitters from airborne electronic reconnaissance systems, using passive measurements on the electromagnetic waves of the emitter taken from several locations. Measurements for finding the emitter may be either the direction of arrival at 2 or more locations along the aircraft's flight path for single-aircraft DF (direction- finding) systems, or the relative time of arrival of emitter pulses at the different aircraft locations for 3-aircraft TOA (time-of-arrival) systems. Emitter location accuracy is a function of the accuracy of these indirect measurements of the emitter location and the estimation procedure used to combine the accuracies of various measurements of location and bearing. A general expression is derived for a lower bound to the covariance matrix of the unbiased estimates of emitter location coordinates (and consequently the location CEP), using the Cramer-Rao inequality. Examples illustrate the application of the Cramer-Rao lower bound to the emitter CEP for both DF and TOA systems.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 1971
Accession Number
AD0729767

Entities

People

  • L. H. Wegner

Organizations

  • RAND Corporation

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Biomedical

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Aircrafts
  • Angle Of Arrival
  • Base Lines
  • Cartesian Coordinates
  • Coordinate Systems
  • Direction Finding
  • Distance Measuring Equipment
  • Error Analysis
  • Flight Paths
  • Geometry
  • Ground Stations
  • Measurement
  • Navigation
  • Probability
  • Two Dimensional
  • United States

Fields of Study

  • Engineering

Readers

  • Radar Systems Engineering.
  • Sensor Fusion and Tracking Systems.
  • Statistical inference.

Technology Areas

  • Microelectronics
  • Microelectronics - Microelectromechanical Systems
  • Space