Experiments in radio location estimation using an airbone array

Abstract

The problem of interest is the determination of the location of a licensed or unlicensed source of radio transmission from air. Accordingly, an experiment was conducted in 2008 involving a two-dimensional antenna array mounted on a Zeppelin NT airship. This paper gives an overview of the experiment and some results obtained to date by post-processing of the collected data. A combination of angles of arrival estimation of radio sources and the proposed attitude correction technique gives an accurate location estimation of a radio source located in an urban area. We also verified the feasibility of localization system using on-board array antennas through the experiment.