On convexification of range measurement based sensor and source localization problems

Abstract This paper revisits 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.