Passive localization of the wireless signal source attracts a considerable level of research interest for its wide applications in modern wireless communication systems. To accurately locate the signal source passively in the downtown area, sensors are carried on the unmanned aerial vehicles flying in the air, where the wireless sensor network can be established with an optimal geometry configuration conveniently. In this case, the influence of multipath fading can be avoided and the time difference of arrival measurement can be estimated precisely in Rician channel. By employing the operating center as a calibration source to refine the positions of the unmanned aerial vehicles, we present a simplified formulation of the time difference of arrival localization method according to the min-max criterion. To accurately estimate the position of the source, the nonlinear equations are relaxed using semidefinite programming to obtain an initial solution, which is utilized as the starting point of the iterative algorithm to refine the solution. In the simulation section, the validity and the robustness of the proposed methods are verified through the performance comparison with the Cramer–Rao lower bound.
On the performance of wireless sensor network time difference of arrival localization under realistic interference and timing estimation errors