Emitter location errors in electronic recognition system

The paper describes some of the problems associated with emitter location calculations. This aspect is the most important part of the series of tasks in the electronic recognition systems. The basic tasks include: detection of emission of electromagnetic signals, tracking (determining the direction of emitter sources), signal analysis in order to classify different emitter types and the identification of the sources of emission of the same type. The paper presents a brief description of the main methods of emitter localization and the basic mathematical formulae for calculating their location. The errors’ estimation has been made to determine the emitter location for three different methods and different scenarios of emitters and direction finding (DF) sensors deployment in the electromagnetic environment. The emitter has been established using a special computer program. On the basis of extensive numerical calculations, the evaluation of precise emitter location in the recognition systems for different configuration alignment of bearing devices and emitter was conducted. The calculations which have been made based on the simulated data for different methods of location are presented in the figures and respective tables. The obtained results demonstrate that calculation of the precise emitter location depends on: the number of DF sensors, the distances between emitter and DF sensors, their mutual location in the reconnaissance area and bearing errors. The precise emitter location varies depending on the number of obtained bearings. The higher the number of bearings, the better the accuracy of calculated emitter location in spite of relatively high bearing errors for each DF sensor.