Abstract: The photoelectric reconnaissance equipment is widely applied in ground target reconnaissance of small and medium-sized UAV. In order to realize the single-station passive location to ground target by UAV photoelectric equipment without the laser ranging information, the method of single-station passive location based on the virtual ellipsoid was proposed, and the model of single-station passive location to ground target was constructed. In the principle of intersection of space rays and virtual ellipsoid, the geodetic coordinates of the targets were obtained in real time by resolving the equivalent azimuth and pitch, estimating the target altitude and resolving the target location. The simulation results show that, under the condition that the altitude estimate error is less than 500 m, the method of single-station passive location can realize the three-dimensional target location with the location accuracy of longitude and latitude of 10⁻³ ° and the altitude location accuracy of 150 m, the relative location with higher than 50% degree of confidence and better than 10% R passive location accuracy can be realized.