Journal of Radio Electronics. eISSN 1684-1719. 2026. ¹3
Full text in Russian (pdf)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.30898/1684-1719.2026.3.3
ALGORITHM FOR DETERMINING THE COORDINATES
OF AN UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLE USING THE TIME-DIFFERENCE-
OF-ARRIVAL METHOD BASED ON POLARIMETRIC MEASUREMENTS
OF SIGNALS FROM ONBOARD RADIO EQUIPMENT
S.N. Zamuruyev, M.V. Tsvetkov
MIREA – Russian Technological University
119454, Russia, Moscow, Vernadsky Ave, 78
The paper was received January 22, 2026.
Abstract. The paper presents an algorithm for passive localization of an unmanned aerial vehicle based on the joint processing of time-difference-of-arrival measurements and polarimetric characteristics of radio signals emitted by its onboard radio-frequency equipment. Conventional time-difference-of-arrival based methods achieve high positioning accuracy only under line-of-sight conditions; however, their performance significantly degrades in the presence of multipath propagation caused by reflections from buildings, terrain, and other obstacles. To enhance both accuracy and robustness under such conditions, the proposed approach exploits polarimetric information acquired by tri-orthogonal antenna systems deployed at geographically distributed direction-finding stations. From the measured complex electric field vector, a nine-component Stokes vector is computed, and the degree of depolarization is derived as an indicator of the presence of reflected signal components-fully polarized waves correspond to direct-path propagation, whereas depolarization suggests multipath interference. This depolarization metric is then used to construct adaptive weighting coefficients incorporated into the cost function. The resulting cost function is minimized using the differential evolution algorithm. Simulations of a three-station direction-finding network demonstrate that, when an artificial reflected signal with a known delay is introduced at one station, the proposed algorithm significantly reduces localization error compared to the conventional time-difference-of-arrival method. The approach is particularly effective in urban and mountainous environments, where multipath propagation is the dominant factor impairing unmanned aerial vehicle positioning accuracy.
Key words: coordinate determination, radio signal, difference-rangefinder method, unmanned aerial vehicle, polarization, triorthogonal antenna system, Stokes parameters, degree of depolarization.
Corresponding author: Tsvetkov Maksim Viktorovich, sergei_lutsenko@inbox.ru
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For citation:
Zamuruyev S.N., Tsvetkov M.V. Algorithm for determining the coordinates of an unmanned aerial vehicle using the time-difference-of-arrival method based on polarimetric measurements of signals from onboard radio equipment. // Journal of Radio Electronics. – 2026. – ¹. 3. https://doi.org/10.30898/1684-1719.2026.3.3 (In Russian)