An Approach for Identifying the Likelihood of an Irregular Terrain Profile Being a Multipath Scattering Center in Emitter Localization

Abstract

In a single-receiver source localization scenario, pulses radiated from an emitting source (emitter) are reradiated from distributed points over the irregular terrain due to the diffuse scattering. Obviously, diffuse scattering may be occurred at anywhere over irregular terrains in dense scattering environments. Hence, a particular region from which the multipath pulses are scattered over the irregular terrain can be taken as a scattering center. In fact, a multipath scattering center may be approximated as multiple reflection points visible to the receiver. For this reason, an uncertainty in location of multipath scattering centers is expected. However, as proposed in this study, the likelihood of a particular region from which the multipath pulses are scattered may be identified if digital data of the irregular terrain, positions of the receiver and the transmitter, and Angle of Arrival (AOA) of the multipath are provided. In this context, this study attempts to provide an approach for identifying the likelihood of a particular region being a scattering center over the irregular terrain. To this end, Geometric Optics (GO)-based wave propagation principles are exploited to estimate path loss that would a basis for estimating likelihoods. Simulations are performed to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. This study aims to make significant contribution to an ongoing research on passive localization of radar emitters by exploiting multipath in dense scattering environments. © 2017 Association for Computing Machinery.