Time difference of arrival enhancement with ray tracing simulation

Abstract

A Hybrid technique is proposed to improve the Time Difference of Arrival (TDoA) Localization systems in Non-line of Sight situation. A Ray tracing simulation tool is used to extract the time of arrival difference characteristic from the environment and binding with the TDoA a multilateration sensor scheme to estimate the position of an electromagnetic emitter. The idea was to improve the TDoA sensor performance to overcome multipath imprecision typical in the urban environment, where different rays are sum up at each sensor increasing the error position. The technique proposed uses time Channel Impulse Response estimation and a Ray Tracing propagation tool to build a geographic time difference fingerprint that is used to enhance the performance. A measurement campaign was done to validate the technique and showed an enhancement in the localization precision.