Source Geolocation in Urban Environments Using Multipath Fingerprinting

Abstract

A method for determining the location of Global Systems for Mobile Communications (GSM) mobile transmitters is proposed. Our approach estimates the location of a source without the use of multilateration or Line-of-Sight (LOS) techniques. A Multipath Characteristic Database (MCD) containing the multipath feature vectors, for each possible transmitter location within an area of interest, is populated via ray-tracing software simulations. The multipath characteristics of interest are angle-of-arrival (AOA) (azimuth) and time-of-arrival (TOA). By minimizing the “distance” between estimated and simulated multipath feature vectors, an estimate for the actual source location can be obtained. The development of the estimation method is presented, followed by a detailed analysis of its estimation accuracy. Since the proposed method utilizes a simulated multipath signature database based upon the knowledge of the environment and the terrain, the need for a priori soundings from the area of interest is eliminated, thus making this location estimation system suitable for application in denied territories. Location accuracies compare favorably with the requirements for the location of wireless 9-1-1 callers as recommended by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).