Géolocalisation de sources radio-électriques : stratégies, algorithmes et performances

This thesis deal with the geographical positioning of multiple radio transmitters thanks to array processing techniques. The estimation of the position is achieved thanks to multiple sensor base stations. We aim to design estimators of the sources position and to characterize the fundamental limits of localization strategies in terms of root-mean-square-error in a passive signal context (no prior information on the transmitted signals). Traditionally, the geographical positioning is achieved by means of a two steps procedure. In the first step, intermediate location parameters (angles of arrival, times of arrival ...) are locally estimated, in a decentralized processing on each station. Then, the location is achieved in a central processing unit thanks to all the transmitted parameters in the second step. This strategy is obviously suboptimal. An optimal solution of the geographical localization problem rather consists in estimating the position of the sources in a centralized manner at the central processing unit, assuming that all base stations are able to transfer all their signals to the central processing unit. Then the localization can be achieved in a one step procedure. The problem now depends on the position of the sources directly and not on intermediate parameters. This approach appears to be very interesting but the characterization of their fundamental limits is still an open question. In this thesis we examine the advantages of the centralized one step procedure compared to the traditional decentralized two-step procedure. First, we study the case of narrowband signals on the station network that offers a relevant theoretical framework to compare the performance of centralized and decentralized localization scheme. Then, we propose an alternative to the existing techniques in the more general wideband signal context based on a spatio-temporal approach. The comparison of existing techniques and the new ones to optimal performance is also part of the work reported in this thesis. A multistage geographical positioning technique is also provided for the multipaths propagation context.