Patent ID: 7817092

Claim:
A method for determining the location of a remote electromagnetic radiator, said method comprising: placing a plurality of electromagnetic sensors on a grid in a region in which said radiator is expected to be located; receiving electromagnetic radiation emitted from said radiator with said sensors; estimating the power received by each of said sensors with said corresponding sensor; integrating the estimated power received from said radiator by the combination of at least four of said sensors in a computer processing step, to thereby generate a space/power sample set; generating in a computer processing step, a set of propagation losses from all possible radiator locations in the region to the location of each of said sensors; for each hypothesized or possible radiator location, taking the ratio of all possible pairs of propagation losses in said set of propagation losses in a computer processing step, to thereby generate ratios of hypothesized- or possible-location propagation losses; taking the ratio of all possible pairs of powers in said space/power set in a computer processing step, to produce power ratios for each pair of space/power samples in said set; at each hypothesized or possible location of the radiator, determining a value by subtracting from the ratio of powers the ratio of estimated or measured propagation losses for each hypothesized or possible radiator location, and squaring the value in a computer processing step, to produce squared values; integrating the squared values over all pairs of sensors in a computer processing step, to thereby produce a minimized mean squared value of propagation loss ratio matched to ratios of estimated or measured power from each grid point to each sensor location; and deeming the grid location of the radiator to be at the minimum value of said minimized mean square value of propagation loss matched to ratios of measured power.