Geolocalization via Tracking of Wideband Radio Astronomical Sources in the Presence of Radio Frequency Interference

Sky tracking of permanent radio astronomical sky sources has been shown to be a promising alternative method to global positioning system (GPS) especially when GPS signals are either unavailable or may have been compromised. On the other hand, radio astronomical observations are increasingly corrupted by man-made radio frequency interference (RFI). In this paper, radio astronomical geolocalization is investigated from the viewpoint of wideband measurements while combating RFI. The proposed geolocalization algorithm is designed as a joint iterative visibility phase reconstruction and localization algorithm based on unconstrained minimization. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is validated using simulated data. This approach can be extended to enable similar geolocating capability to ground based objects such as rovers, etc. on other celestial bodies in the solar system where there are no orbiting satellites like GPS.