Abstract: The solution of time difference of arrival (TDOA) location technology for wireless communication is a complex nonlinear equation optimization problem. This paper adopts a realencoded genetic algorithm, and proposes an improved adaptive genetic algorithm which designs the adaptive crossover rate and mutation rate formula, considers not only the influence of evolutionary generations 〖JP2〗on the population, but also the fitness of different individuals〖JP〗 in each generation. The elitist strategy is introduced to prevent the destruction of good individuals, effectively generate new individuals and then get rid of the local optimal value search to achieve the global optimal solution. The simulation results show that the performance of the algorithm is stable, and the speed of evolutionary convergence and the accuracy of TDOA location estimation are greatly improved.