Performance Improvement of Maximum Likelihood Wave Source Localization with LOS/NLOS Identification.

Wave source or emitter localization aims at estimating positions of unknown transmitters of radio signals. A maximum likelihood wave source localization scheme (MLE scheme) using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is proposed in non-line-of-sight (NLOS) environments. We propose a new wave source localization scheme by extending the MLE scheme. The proposed scheme first obtains a tentative wave source location using the MLE scheme, and then identifies whether each path between the tentative location and a measurement point is in LOS or NLOS. Finally, the tentative location is corrected by the LOS/NLOS identification. We evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme using simulation experiments and show that the average estimation error of the proposed scheme is improved by more than 30% compared to the MLE scheme.