Abstract: In order to solve the problem that different sensitivities among various sensors and threshold settings have a great influence on the accuracy of arrival time-difference location in traditional location of acoustic emission source, two new approaches of planar location are presented based on the research of dispersive characteristics of Lamb wave, arrival time of different modes determined by using the peak of the magnitude of Gabor wavelet time-frequency analysis on the view of modal acoustic emission and introduced velocity factor. One method of location is based on the same frequency and different modes and the other is based on the same mode and different frequency. The two methods whose accuracy is demonstrated by experiments can solve the proposed problem completely, reduce the number of sensors in planar location, avoid false location in traditional triangular location and be used to monitor structures which are not feasible for the traditional method of source location.