Exploiting Sparsity for Robust Sensor Network Localization in Mixed LOS/NLOS Environments

Abstract

We address the problem of robust network localization in realistic mixed LOS/NLOS environments. We make use of the fact that the bias of range measurement errors is not only non-negative but also sparse when LOS dominates, which has been long overlooked in the existing literature. To exploit these two properties, we introduce a sparsity-promoting regularization term and relax the resulting optimization problem to a semi-definite programming (SDP) problem. The proposed method admits a neat mathematical formulation and is computationally cheap. Moreover, its global convergence is guaranteed and it achieves good robustness against NLOS measurements. In numerical results, the proposed method outperforms representative state-of-the-art SDP approaches, in terms of both localization accuracy and computational efficiency.