Accurate three-step algorithm for joint source position and propagation speed estimation

A popular strategy for source localization is to utilize the measured differences in arrival times of the source signal at multiple pairs of receivers. Most of the time-difference-of-arrival (TDOA) based algorithms in the literature assume that the signal transmission speed is known which is valid for in-air propagation. However, for in-solid scenarios such as seismic and tangible acoustic interface applications, the signal propagation speed is unknown. In this paper, we exploit the ideas in the two-step weighted least squares method [1] to design a three-step algorithm for joint source position and propagation speed estimation. Simulation results are included to contrast the proposed estimator with the linear least squares scheme as well as Cramér-Rao lower bound. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.