Abstract: A time difference of arrival(TDOA) localization method is proposed for short-wave target corrected by calibration emitters. Based on the ionospheric reflection virtual height of spherical reflection model, a TDOA localization model is established for short-wave source targets and calibration emitters on the Earth’s surface. Considering the influence of ionospheric reflection region shared by calibration emitters and target, the distance correlation of each ionospheric reflection point is introduced into the covariance matrix of ionospheric virtual height, and the target localization accuracy is corrected. The feasibility the target localization accuracy corrected by calibration emitters is analyzed by deriving and simulating the Cramer-Rao lower bound. Further, a maximum likelihood estimation method is proposed based on Armijo’s linear search Newton method. Effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by simulation data, and a good localization effect is achieved.