Weighted-Hyperbola Technique for Locating Pulsed Sources

The weighted-hyperbola technique is an iterative computational technique for processing data on the times of arrival of pulsed signals at more than four observing stations to determine location (in both space and time) of origin of the signals. (The location is overdetermined when data from more than four stations are available). The technique was developed especially for use in processing data on electric-field signals to locate lightning sources and is expected to be particularly beneficial in cases in which the sources are near the ground. On each iteration, a "best estimate" of the location of the source is computed as a weighted average of locations from all possible four-station combinations of readings. The weight for each spatial coordinate for each four-station combination is proportional to the reciprocal of the variance for that coordinate and four-station combination, where the variance is based on the previous best estimate.