AWACS Radar Aircraft Trajectory Tracking via Networked Ground Receiver Stations.

In this paper, we study the tracking of an airborne warning and control system (AWACS) radar position using receptions from a network of ground receiver stations. We demonstrate that combining received signal strength from each of the networked participating receivers can enable accurate trajectory tracking. We propose a localization estimator integrates maximum-likelihood-based angle of arrival and triangulation methods. The proposed scheme circumvents the challenges associated with trilateration-based tracking algorithms, where the placement of receivers is critical to avoid ill-conditioned matrices. Simulation results demonstrate a 100-fold improvement in accuracy at an SNR of 16 dB compared to RSSI-based estimators.