Can someone give a brief outline of the data flow for MLAT? Does it go something like this?
Stations 1 through X receive a message and log them with a time stamp.
The same stations send the messages to flightaware.
FA processes the messages and does MLAT calculations using the time stamps.
Messages with the results of the calculations are sent back to the stations.
Is that about right? Or do the stations talk directly to each other?
I think that’s correct. The source code is on (https://github.com/mutability) look for the client and server repositories.
Stations don’t communicate with each other. I think the Planeplotter system does that, but it also requires every station to be synced to NTP time.
Also, in addition to the timestamp, you have the MLAT counter bits, which provides the finer resolution.
Yes, that is correct.
The timestamps associated with the messages are a simple count of samples received since dump1090 started, rather than a wallclock time.