A passive location system for single frequency networks using digital terrestrial TV signals

In this work, a passive location system for single frequency networks using digital terrestrial signals is proposed. A cross-correlation method that requires a correlation with fixed frequency was introduced for time delay estimation. The idea is first online reconstruction and update of the transmitted copy of the nearest base station (BS), and then uses this signal copy for correlation with the received signal samples. A time delay extraction method combined with K-mean clustering algorithm is developed. The minimum value of each cluster is extracted as the time delay of each BS. The BS identification can be modelled as a data association problem. A new gate that requires little statistical knowledge was utilised to solve time-of-arrival measurement uncertainty. Meanwhile, the data association strategy is also developed for successive data stream. Mobile station location is formulated as an optimisation problem and solved by a search processing. Simulations study was conducted to evaluate the system performance for different scenarios. The results demonstrate its robustness and high performance. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.