Causal association of electromagnetic signals using the Cayley-Menger determinant

Abstract

In complex electromagnetic environments it can often be difficult to determine whether signals received by an antenna array emanated from the same source. The failure to appropriately assign signal reception events to the correct emission event makes accurate localization of the signal source impossible. In this paper we show that as the received signal events must lie on the light-cone of the emission event the Cayley-Menger determinate calculated from using the light-cone geodesic distances between received signals must be zero. This result enables us to construct an algorithm for sorting received signals into groups corresponding to the same far-field emission. © 2009 American Institute of Physics.