UAVs-assisted passive source localization using robust TDOA ranging for search and rescue

Estimating the location of a target in search-and-rescue operations is quite challenging when the target is not responding. Therefore, in this paper, we investigate the passive target localization problem using mobile unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), where multiple mobile UAVs receive the time-difference-of-arrival (TDOA) measurements from the source UAV. Unlike traditional TDOA for static UAVs, the problem becomes more challenging when considering the mobility of UAVs. Therefore, we propose a novel TDOA model for target localization with mobile UAVs. We also measure the performance limit inequality between its Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) and the mean-squared error (MSE). & COPY; 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of The Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Automated summary

This paper investigates the problem of passive target localization using mobile unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), proposes a novel TDOA model for target localization with mobile UAVs, and measures the performance limit between its Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) and the mean-squared error (MSE).