Scott in Aztlan wrote:

Suppose you were participating in a search for a hidden radio transmitter, only
instead of the usual radio receiver with a directional antenna you have a
receiver with an omnidirectional antenna and a GPS receiver. As you wander
around, you collect positions from the GPS and signal strength values at those
positions from the radio; your goal is to crunch these data points into an
estimate of the transmitter's location.

Clearly you could use trilateration with any 3 of the data points and get an
estimate, but how would you make use of the fact that you have an arbitrary
number of data points? Isn't there some algorithm which, the more data points it
is given, the better its estimate gets (similar to the way you can average a
series of position readings taken from a stationary GPS receiver to compensate
for the effects of SA)?

Can someone point me in the right direction?

A system for integrating GPS with direction finding has been out for a
few years now. Utilizing Doppler Direction finding equipment, the
heading of the Doppler array, along with the Lat Long of the monitoring
station is sent in a packet burst and superimposed on a map. When you
have 2-3 of these stations submitting this data in real time, you get a
practically instantaneous triangulation on the location of the transmitter.

The Agrelo Doppler units that were available several years ago, had this
capability.

Andy
WD4KDN



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