Distributed network for multi-lateration with circularly polarized

Abstract

A distributed radio geo-location and tracking system has a distributed subsystem architecture that distributes its processing workload over a plurality of information handling and processing subsystems. For maximum detection capability, each of a plurality of tag emission receivers is equipped with a circularly polarized, omnidirectional antenna, to provide hemispherical coverage. The receivers are coupled to a partitioned plurality of detection processors, that are coupled via distributed association processors to multiple location processors. Each detection processor demodulates and time stamps received energy correlated to known spreading codes of the tags, to associate received energy with only one tag. It transmits a message containing this information over a communication framework to an association processor. The computational load is equitably distributed by a flow control mechanism among available association processors, with all receptions of a single tag transmission being directed to the same association processor. An association processor organizes received messages by tag and time-of-arrival (TOA), and transmits association reports over an association communication process of the communication framework to one of plural distributed location processors. A location processor determines the geographical locations of tags using the TOA information in the association reports.