TDoA Positioning in Single Frequency Networks without Transmitter Identities

Terrestrial broadcasting signals have been recognized as promising candidates for positioning and navigation needs. However, in some terrestrial broadcasting networks, which are usually single frequency networks, the transmitter confusion problem poses a huge obstacle to almost all positioning algorithms. Without knowing the transmitter identities, measurements can't be associated to transmitters coordinates properly, thus leaving receiver coordinates unable to be estimated. Meanwhile, as the exact transmission delay is usually hard to estimate, the time difference of arrival (TDoA) based positioning is widely used. In this paper, a novel TDoA based localization method is proposed to realize positioning in single frequency networks. With the proposed method, the receiver can estimate its own position when transmitter identities are missing from the signals. Simulation results verify the feasibility and accuracy of the method and discussions regarding its properties are given.