Performance analysis of a minimum configuration multilateration system for airborne emitter position estimation

Abstract

A multilateration system estimates the position of the airborne emitter (AE) of an aircraft by measuring the time-delay between the received signals. Provided the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is sufficiently high at above 34 dB, the multilateration system can accurately estimate position in 3D. This is an advantage over angle of arrival (AOA) that estimates position only in 2D. This paper investigates the position estimation (PE) coverage of a minimum receiver arrangement for a multilateration system operating at frequencies of 1,090 MHz and 8 to 12 GHz (X-band). Due to complexity of the PE estimation, a methodology is introduced based on Monte Carlo simulations to estimate the PE coverage. The coverage is evaluated at various SNR, range and bearing, and benchmarked with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) reduced vertical separation minimum (RVSM), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) horizontal separation and performance of current air defence radar technology. The evaluation shows that the multilateration system is able to estimate position in 3D for a range of 20 km and at altitude of 15 km, and in 2D for a range of 80 km.