Multi-Network TDOA: an opportunity for vessels radiolocation

Detection and localization of vessels can be carried out by exploiting the radiolocation approach. Nevertheless, the employment of radiolocalization far from the shore can be limited by the lack of enough receivers to perform a correct multi-lateration of the RF source. In order to solve this gap, mobile assets or base stations from different networks need to be exploited. In particular, within a given search area, a ship could deploy low-cost receivers on drifting buoys, balloons or RPAs, creating a network with several nodes. Although this opportunity allows to enhance the geometry of the system, it also introduces synchronization issues. Such issues are mainly related to the dissimilarities in hardware and/or software of the employed devices. A “Multi-Network TDOA” algorithm is proposed, in order to solve this problem. The developed approach allows to account for the different offsets among the included nodes. The algorithm is compared with the classic TDOA method using simulated data in different scenarios. From the results it emerges that whereas the classical algorithm is strongly affected by the offset, the proposed approach is robust with respect to this parameter. Moreover, the maximum synchronism offset between the base network and the additional devices is evaluated. Finally, the optimization of the overall network, in terms of minimum number of additional receivers, is assessed.

GIOIA Ciro;  SERMI Francesco;  TARCHI Dario;  VESPE Michele;  KYOVTOROV Vladimir; 

2017-10-24

IEEE

JRC105716

978-1-5090-5922-5,   

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7954215/,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC105716,   

10.1109/EURONAV.2017.7954215,