Time alignment of lightning emissions at LF-MF using waveform feature comparison

A method to generate data to geolocate one or more lightning sources that generate electromagnetic field (EMF) emissions in the form of lightning pulses, the method comprising:

• detecting in an environment the plurality of lightning pulses that are close together in time;
• producing lightning-EMF data from the detected plurality of lightning pulses, the lightning-EMF data representing the plurality of lightning pulses;
• extracting a lightning-waveform-feature set from the lightning-EMF data, including extracting two or more waveform features for each of the plurality of lightning pulses from the lightning-EMF data, including:
• analyzing the lightning-EMF data to identify a plurality of pulse segments in the lightning EMF data, each of the plurality of pulse segments representing at least a portion of a different one of the plurality of lightning pulses;
• calculating a rise time for each of the plurality of pulse segments;
• and
• calculating a peak-to-zero time for each of the plurality of pulse segments, wherein the two or more waveform features for each of the plurality of lightning pulses includes a corresponding rise time and a corresponding peak-to-zero time;
• and
• transmitting the extracted lightning-waveform-feature set that includes both the rise time and the peak-to-zero time for each of the plurality of lightning pulses that are close together in time to a time alignment processor to perform time alignment on a plurality of extracted lightning-waveform-feature sets received from a plurality of lightning-detection sensors and to geolocate the one or more lightning sources based on the time-aligned plurality of extracted lightning-waveform-feature sets.