Joint wireless positioning and emitter identification in DVB-T single frequency networks

Digital television (DTV) signal has been recognized as a promising signal for navigation and positioning. However, due to the single frequency network (SFN) transmission within the European standard digital video broadcasting terrestrial (DVB-T) system, emitter confusion problem occurs in navigation and positioning, resulting in that a receiver is unable to know from which emitter a received signal comes. In this paper, we consider the wireless positioning with emitter confusion problem in DVB-T SFN networks. A joint wireless positioning and emitter identification algorithm is proposed, which is based on the expectation maximization (EM) method. The proposed algorithm is tested in a scenario, where signals are received from three to five emitters. Simulation results show that, relying on more than three emitters used in the tests for 2-D positioning, the EM-assisted positioning algorithm is feasible to achieve accurate positioning results in the existence of the emitter confusion problem. Our studies show that the performance achieved by the proposed algorithm approaches the Cramér-Rao bound. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm is effective to identify the DTV emitters, and the positioning performance is robust to the emitter identification error. Additionally, our methodology is general, and can be employed for time of arrival-based positioning in any SFNs