Design and Implementation of a Distributed Tdoa-Based Geolocation System Using Ossie and Low-Cost Usrp Boards

The Software Communications Architecture (SCA) specification defines a framework that allows modular software components to be developed and assembled to build larger radio applications. The specification allows for these components to be distributed among a set of computing hardware and to be connected by standard interfaces. This research aims to build a spatially distributed SCA application for the Open Source SCA Implementation: Embedded (OSSIE) implementation using low-cost Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) hardware. The system collects signals from multiple spatially distributed collection devices and use those signals to compute precision estimates for the location of emitters using time difference of arrival (TDOA) computations. Several OSSIE components and tools are developed to support this research. Results are presented showing the capabilities of the geolocation system.