Patent ID: 7970542

Claim:
A method for identifying a source location of lightning, comprising said steps of: positioning three or more monitoring stations at different spaced apart geographic locations, each said monitoring station including a matched filter receiver; responsive to a lightning occurrence, receiving a signal at each of said matched filter receivers from a common source of said lightning occurrence having a source location; in each said matched filter receiver, communicating said signal to a plurality of matched filters, each having a filter characteristic matched to a different one of a plurality of nominal but arbitrary lightning waveforms corresponding to a type of lightning occurrence; scaling a signal energy in a filter channel respectively provided for each of said matched filters to compensate for known predetermined unequal signal energy associated with each said type of lightning occurrence; generating at each said monitoring station a time stamp value and assigning said time stamp value to a peak output of one of said plurality of matched filters having a largest correlation value among a plurality of outputs of said plurality of matched filters; communicating said time stamp value assigned at each of said plurality of matched filter receivers to a central processor; and determining said source location based on said time stamp values.