We present analysis methods that may be used to geolocate emitters using one or more moving receivers. While some of the methods we present may apply to a broader class of signals, our primary interest is locating and tracking ships from short pulsed transmissions, such as the maritime Automatic Identification System (AIS.) The AIS signal is difficult to process and track since the pulse duration is only 25 milliseconds, and the pulses may only be transmitted every six to ten seconds. Several fundamental problems are addressed, including demodulation of AIS/GMSK signals, verification of the emitter location, accurate frequency and delay estimation and identification of pulse trains from the same emitter. In particular, we present several new correlation methods, including cross-cross correlation that greatly improves correlation accuracy over conventional methods and cross- TDOA and cross-FDOA functions that make it possible to estimate time and frequency delay without the need of computing a two dimensional cross-ambiguity surface. By isolating pulses from the same emitter and accurately tracking the received signal frequency, we are able to accurately estimate the emitter location from the received Doppler characteristics.

Date Published: 1 May 2017
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 10202, Automatic Target Recognition XXVII, 102020S (1 May 2017); doi: 10.1117/12.2271698

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 10202:
Automatic Target Recognition XXVII
Firooz A. Sadjadi; Abhijit Mahalanobis, Editor(s)