CRB Weighted Source Localization Method Based on Deep Neural Networks in Multi-UAV Network

With the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) era, the multiunmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) networks have attracted great attention in the fields of source detection and localization. However, as the real-time signal processing performance of the UAV is limited by the computing speed and accuracy of the embedded hardware, the effectiveness of source localization is greatly reduced. Aiming at improving the accuracy and computational efficiency of source localization, a Cramer–Rao bound (CRB) weighted multi-UAV network source localization method is proposed based on the deep neural networks (DNNs) and spatial-spectrum fitting (SSF). The proposed source localization system is composed of UAVs equipped with a radar array. The source location can be achieved using the direction of arrival (DOA) of the source signals of UAVs, but the accuracy and real-time performance of the conventional DOA estimation algorithms are not satisfactory, and the data fusion strategy of the conventional cross-location framework needs further improvement. In the proposed method, a DNN-based SSF, denoted as the deep SSF (DeepSSF), is designed to achieve accurate DOA estimation. In the DeepSSF, the DOA estimation performance is guaranteed by the DNN’s strong nonlinear fitting ability and highly parallel structure. In addition, based on the obtained DOA information, the source is located once by every two UAVs. Finally, the source localization is realized based on the weighted CRB according to the principle that the more the DOA distribution deviates from zero, the lower the estimation accuracy. The simulation results verify the efficiency of the proposed method.