Patent ID: 8810452

Claim:
A system for geo-locating transmitters of interest, the system comprising: a network comprising a plurality of geographically dispersed sensor stations, said network of geographically dispersed sensor stations including reference sensor stations and one or more blind sensor stations, wherein the one or more blind sensor stations are configured to measure characteristics of a signal transmitted by a wireless transmitter to be located and do not have knowledge of their own location and are not time synchronized, and wherein at least three sensor stations are at a known location and are synchronized with a reference clock, said at least three sensor stations being useful as the reference sensor stations; and a central node configured to control the sensor stations; wherein the one or more blind sensor stations are configured for communication with the central node via a backhaul communications network; wherein the backhaul communications network is configured to permit wireless communications among the sensor stations and central node; wherein the system is configured such that said at least three reference sensor stations transmit a wireless communications waveform to at least one blind sensor station, and the at least one blind sensor station is synchronized and geo-located based on its reception of the wireless communications waveform; wherein each of said plurality of geographically dispersed sensor stations comprises first and second receivers, and a transceiver; wherein the first receiver comprises a high sensitivity diversity timing receiver configured to receive GNSS signals from satellites above the earth or from terrestrial broadcast stations, to enable the determination of the location of the sensor station and to provide time and frequency synchronization for the sensor station when these signals are available; wherein the second receiver comprises a multichannel tunable wideband digital receiver and signal processor system configured to receive radio frequency (RF) signals from wireless devices to be located, to process said RF signals, and to provide timing and/or power measurement results to the central node; and wherein the transceiver comprises a communications transceiver configured to provide communications between the sensor station and other sensor stations and the central node.