On-Board Satellite-Based Interference Geolocation Using Time Difference of Arrival Measurements

This paper studies how satellites can be used to geolocate an interference source. In particular this paper considers on-board satellite geolocation performed by a single satellite. As for the interference source, this paper focuses on a single ground-based static interferer that continuously sends a signal toward the satellite as long as the satellite is visible. The methodology proposed in this paper is based on the aggregation of multiple Time Difference of Arrival (TDoA) measurements collected by the satellite at different time instants. The TDoA measurement at a specific time is obtained by looking at the delay at which the interference signal arrives at the two antennas the satellite is equipped with. The final interferer position estimation is obtained by aggregating all TDoA measurements exploiting the Taylor Series (TS) method. The estimation accuracy of the proposed approach is numerically evaluated. Furthermore, this paper investigates the impact on such accuracy of different system parameters, such as the antenna placement and distance, the accuracy, sampling time, and collection interval of TDoA measurements, and the position of the satellite orbit with respect to the interferer position. This analysis provides many insights on how to configure the parameters of the system and on the strengths and limitations of the proposed approach. Among them: 1) the antennas should be placed cross-track and at least 1 meter apart; 2) the TDoA collection time window should be at least 2 hours; 3) a reasonable TDoA sampling time is 30 seconds; and 4) the closer the interferer to the projection of the satellite orbit on the Earth the lower the estimation accuracy, though this limitation can be compensated by adding two additional antennas along-track.