Characterization of Multi-Carrier Locator Performance

Time-Difference-of-Arrival (TDOA) location estimation is central to an OFDM based Precision Personnel Locator system being developed at WPI. Here we describe a component of the effort towards characterizing the performance of such a system and verifying the functionality of hardware and software implementations. The performance degradations due to noise in the received signal and misalignments between transmitter and receiver clock and heterodyne frequencies are investigated. This investigation involves development of a MATLAB simulator for the entire system, experimental measures using a prototype implementation and linearized analytic analysis of specific subsystems. The three types of characterizations are compared, confirming agreement, and analytic results are used to demonstrate construction of a system engineering design tool