Parallel pulse correlation and geolocation

Abstract

The identification and location of ground-based radars via orbiting receivers require the correlation of pulses, the determination of time differences of arrival, and geolocation. Data rates in emitter-rich environments would swamp single-CPU processors performing this operation. The authors present an innovative parallel algorithm developed specifically for this application on massively parallel computers. The algorithm is based on the parallel computation and analysis of a matrix containing the differences in the time of arrival of all pulses received in a time window, and on the parallel proof/disproof of hypothesized emitter locations. Output contains the number of emitters and their location and PRI (pulse repetition interval) sequence. The algorithm was tested on a 16 K processor Connection Machine.<>