English

On Convexification of Range Measurement Based Sensor and Source Localization Problems

Optimization and Control 2013-10-29 v1

Abstract

This manuscript is a preliminary pre-print version of a journal submission by the authors, revisiting the problem of range measurement based localization of a signal source or a sensor. The major geometric difficulty of the problem comes from the non-convex structure of optimization tasks associated with range measurements, noting that the set of source locations corresponding to a certain distance measurement by a fixed point sensor is non-convex both in two and three dimensions. Differently from various recent approaches to this localization problem, all starting with a non-convex geometric minimization problem and attempting to devise methods to compensate the non-convexity effects, we suggest a geometric strategy to compose a convex minimization problem first, that is equivalent to the initial non-convex problem, at least in noise-free measurement cases. Once the convex equivalent problem is formed, a wide variety of convex minimization algorithms can be applied. The paper also suggests a gradient based localization algorithm utilizing the introduced convex cost function for localization. Furthermore, the effects of measurement noises are briefly discussed. The design, analysis, and discussions are supported by a set of numerical simulations.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1310.7042,
  title  = {On Convexification of Range Measurement Based Sensor and Source Localization Problems},
  author = {Baris Fidan and Fatma Kiraz},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1310.7042},
  year   = {2013}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T01:54:28.989Z