This study discusses the localization problem based on time delay and Doppler shift for a far-field scenario. The conventional location methods employ two steps that first extract intermediate parameters from the received signals and then determine the source position from the measured parameters. As opposed to the traditional two-step methods, the direct position determination (DPD) methods accomplish the localization in a single step without computing intermediate parameters. However, the DPD cost function often remains non-convex, thereby it will cost a high amount of computational resources to find the estimated position through traversal search. Weiss proposed a DPD estimator to mitigate the computational complexity via eigenvalue decomposition. Unfortunately, when the computational resources are rather limited, Weiss’s method fails to satisfy the timeliness. To solve this problem, this paper develops a DPD estimator using expectation maximization (EM) algorithm based on time delay and Doppler shift. The proposed method starts from choosing the transmitter-receiver range vector as the hidden variable. Then, the cost function is separated and simplified via the hidden variable, accomplishing the transformation from the high dimensional nonlinear search problem into a few one dimensional search subproblems. Finally, the expressions of EM repetition are obtained through Laplace approximation. In addition, we derive the Cramér–Rao bound to evaluate the best localization performance in this paper. Simulation results confirm that, on the basis of guaranteeing high accuracy, the proposed algorithm makes a good compromise in localization performance and computational complexity.

Direct position determination (DPD) is a novel technique in passive localization field recently, receiving superior localization performance compared with the conventional two-step method. The DPD estimator using Doppler shifts is first proposed by Weiss, but it is not suitable for antenna arrays. Additionally, the performance analysis of this method with system errors is absent. This study discusses the single-step localization problem based on moving arrays and exhibits the performance analysis via matrix eigen-perturbation theory with system errors. First, the DPD method using angle of arrival and Doppler shifts is introduced. Then, by adding the eigenvalue perturbations to the estimated Hermitian matrix, the asymptotic linear formulation of localization errors is derived. Consequently, the mean square error of the DPD method is available. Finally, Cramér–Rao bound without system errors is presented, providing a benchmark for the best localization precision and revealing the influence of system errors on the localization precision. Simulation results demonstrate the theoretical analysis in this study.

Aiming at the problem of passive target tracking, this paper presents a cubature Kalman filter algorithm with weighted least-squares (WLS_CKF) based on time difference of arrival and frequency difference of arrival. The algorithm firstly obtains the initial state of the target through two steps of weighted least-squares, then uses the cubature Kalman filter to complete the nonlinear tracking process. Tracking efficiency and precision are improved by fusing the information of multiple observation stations, multiple measurements and multiple observation time. The simulation results show that, compared with WLS and CKF algorithm, WLS_CKF algorithm can improve the tracking performance significantly.