Patent ID: 8416071

Claim:
A system for relative location determination of a plurality of mobile sensor nodes in a distributed sensor network, comprising: a wireless data link connecting each of said plurality of mobile sensor nodes; an ultrasonic transponder positioned at each mobile sensor node, said transponder including an ultrasonic transmitter adapted to transmit ultrasonic pulses and a first receiver adapted to receive ultrasonic signals; and a controller for each sensor node, wherein the controller for a given sensor node is adapted to determine line-of-sight distances from the given sensor node to each other sensor node using the ultrasonic pulses generated by the ultrasonic transponder for each mobile sensor node, to determine locations of the mobile sensor nodes relative to each other, and to communicate said line-of-sight distances over said wireless data link to the mobile sensor nodes, wherein each mobile sensor node further comprises a radar sensor, and wherein the radar sensor includes a radar data processor configured to track multiple simultaneous tri-lateration target solutions for each possible relative angular position assumption for the mobile sensors in the network, and to select the angular position assumption which yields a converged target track.