Ranging Energy Optimization for Robust Sensor Positioning Based on Semidefinite Programming

Sensor positioning is an important task of location-aware wireless sensor networks. In most sensor positioning systems, sensors and beacons need to emit ranging signals to each other. Sensor ranging energy should be low to prolong system lifetime, but sufficiently high to fulfill prescribed accuracy requirements. This motivates us to investigate ranging energy optimization problems. We address ranging energy optimization for an unsynchronized positioning system, which features robust sensor positioning (RSP) in the sense that a specific accuracy requirement is fulfilled within a prescribed service area. We assume a line-of-sight (LOS) channel exists between the sensor and each beacon. The positioning is implemented by time-of-arrival (TOA) based two-way ranging between a sensor and beacons, followed by a location estimation at a central processing unit. To establish a dependency between positioning accuracy and ranging energy, we assume the adopted TOA and location estimators are unbiased and attain the associated CramÉr–Rao bound. The accuracy requirement has the same form as the one defined by the Federal Communication Commission (FCC), and we present two constraints with linear-matrix-inequality form for the RSP. Ranging energy optimization problems, as well as a practical algorithm based on semidefinite programming are proposed. The effectiveness of the algorithm is illustrated by numerical experiments.