Patent ID: 7436359

Claim:
A method of determining the true location of an emitter by an array of sensors each detecting signals from the emitter and including means for processing data from the array and generating therefrom information indicative of emitter location, wherein the array of sensors comprises an incomplete array and a set of multiple possible emitter locations is initially generated, with one location of the set being, within sensor measurement error, the true location, and where the remaining locations of the set comprise ambiguous spurious locations of the emitter that cannot be distinguished from the true location of the emitter, and where the true location is subsequently determined without necessarily uniquely resolving location ambiguity; comprising the steps of: (a) measuring a set of initial incomplete array data at an initial array location; (b) initializing a location estimator for all possible emitter site locations; (c) determining and storing estimates of all said emitter site locations associated with said set of initial incomplete array data where one of said estimates is, within said sensor measurement error, the true emitter site location; (d) moving the sensor array relative to the emitter, (e) measuring another set of incomplete array data at the subsequent array location; (f) predicting from each emitter site location determined in step (c) the data measured in step (e); (g) associating uniquely the array data from step (e) with an emitter site from step (c) by utilizing the predicted data from step (f); (h) altering the measured data from step (e) utilizing the associated predicted data from step (g), so the altered data is, to within said sensor measurement error, data that would be measured by a complete array of sensors if the emitter were located at the associated, possibly spurious, site; (i) inputting the respective altered associated data from step (h) into the corresponding location estimator from step (b), updating each estimate of emitter site location initialized in step (b), and generating updated predicted measurement data; (j) replacing each stored location estimate of step (c) with the respective updated emitter site location estimate from step (i); (k) comparing the updated predicted data from step (i) with the measured data from step (e), and determining a probability for each updated emitter site location estimate that each said location estimate is the true emitter site location of said one emitter; and (l) generating an estimate of said true emitter site location based on the probability determined in step (k).