A two-step weighted least-squares method for joint estimation of source and sensor locations: A general framework

Abstract It is well known that the Two-step Weighted Least-Squares (TWLS) is a widely used method for source localization and sensor position refinement. For this reason, we propose a unified framework of the TWLS method for joint estimation of multiple disjoint sources and sensor locations in this paper. Unlike some existing works, the presented method is based on more general measurement model, and therefore it can be applied to many different localization scenarios. Besides, it does not have the initialization and local convergence problem. The closed-form expression for the covariance matrix of the proposed TWLS estimator is also derived by exploiting the first-order perturbation analysis. Moreover, the estimation accuracy of the TWLS method is shown analytically to achieve the Cramer-Rao Bound (CRB) before the threshold effect takes place. The theoretical analysis is also performed in a common mathematical framework, rather than aiming at some specific signal metrics. Finally, two numerical experiments are performed to support the theoretical development in this paper.