Date Approved

8-19-2026

Graduate Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Engineering (M.S.E.)

Degree Program

School of Engineering

First Advisor

Bruce Dunne

Second Advisor

Atilla Ozgur Cakmak

Third Advisor

Brian Krug

Academic Year

2025/2026

Abstract

There are many forms of navigation tools employed to determine one’s location; many of these require a dedicated technology such as a satellite array to function. This work explores an alternative method that can triangulate location by determining the angle of arrival of broadcast FM signals. Angle of arrival is determined via a Pseudo-Doppler radio direction finding system; this operates by electronically switching between four circularly oriented antennas and analyzing the phase changes encoded by each of the switches. The direction-finding system is implemented using a low-cost software defined radio to maintain a low system cost and utilize high sampling frequencies. The difficulties of performing direction finding on multiple wideband broadcast FM signals are solved. A comprehensive location determination algorithm interprets the angles found by the system and determines a receiver location. The system is easy to build and uses affordable components. Its performance is compared with simulations and commercially available location determination systems, such as GPS. The system was able to find its own location with an average accuracy of 358.8 m and a worst-case distance of 627.7 m from the true location. This outperformed the expected worst-case distance of 2.6 km found from simulation.

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Available for download on Friday, August 20, 2027

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