If you weren't already aware, the KiwiSDR is a US$299 HF SDR that can monitor the entire 0 - 30 MHz band at once. It is designed to be web-based and shared, meaning that the KiwiSDR owner, or anyone that they've given access, can tune and listen to it via a web browser over the internet. Many public KiwiSDRs can be found and browsed from the list at sdr.hu.
One thing that KiwiSDRs have is a GPS input which allows the KiwiSDR to run from an accurate clock, as well as providing positional data. Time Difference of Arrival (TDoA) is a direction finding technique that relies on measuring the difference in time that a signal is received at over multiple receivers spread out over some distance. In order to do this an accurate clock that is synchronized with each receiver is required. GPS provides this and is able to accurately sync KiwiSDR clocks worldwide.
Over on his blog Christoph Mayer has been steadily documenting his work on getting Time Difference of Arrival (TDoA) direction finding to work with KiwiSDRs. This is not an easy task with HF signals, as they tend to bounce around and propagate through various means, meaning that signals can be delayed if not received directly. So far it appears that he's been most successful in locating signals received by ground wave, but he is also working with an ionospheric ray-tracing model and electron density data to take into account propagation delays from skywave propagation.
In one post from late last year Christoph shows that he was able to pinpoint the location of the German DCF77 longwave time station by using three KiwiSDRs spread out around Europe. The actual location of DCF77 is already known, so this shows that the technique actually works. Other posts show him locating transmitters for STANAG 4285, some unknown frequency hopping signals, OTH radar from Cyprus, CODAR, DRM, VOLMET and more.
Christophs' code can be found at https://github.com/hcab14/TDoA. According to users gathering the data and running the code is still a fairly elaborate process. But there is talk over on the KiwiSDR forums about eventually creating a server that would allows users to more easily request a location computation for a particular signal.
Also related to this topic, priyom.org has been using KiwiSDRs to try and locate numbers stations. Numbers stations are mysterious voice stations on the HF bands that when transmitting read out a string of numbers. Most speculate that the numbers are some sort of code intended for international spy agents. Using a simpler method of just noting which KiwiSDRs in the world receive a particular numbers station more strongly, they've been able to determine the likely country of some well known stations.
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