Efficient Deployment Strategies for Network Localization With Assisting Nodes

Abstract

Location awareness is crucial for a variety of emerging applications. The accuracy of localization depends heavily on the spatial topology of the network, especially in complex and infrastructure-limited wireless environments. In these environments, assisting nodes can be deployed to achieve desirable performance. This paper presents efficient strategies for deploying assisting nodes to improve the localization accuracy of a target agent. Specifically, it provides a methodology to determine a finite set of candidate positions for the assisting nodes. Based on this methodology, we present a convex relaxation to select near-optimal positions for the assisting nodes and establish a theoretical limit on the localization accuracy provided by assisting nodes. We also propose an approximate dynamic programming algorithm to deploy assisting nodes with amenable complexity. A case study validates the proposed strategies and shows the benefits of deploying assisting nodes for accurate localization.