Position-Constrained Stochastic Inference for Cooperative Indoor Localization

TL;DR

This paper introduces a position-constrained stochastic inference framework for cooperative indoor localization, improving accuracy and efficiency by restricting possible node positions to convex polygons, thus reducing computational costs and convergence time.

Contribution

The paper proposes a novel position-constrained stochastic inference method using convex polygons to enhance cooperative localization accuracy and efficiency.

Findings

Improved localization accuracy over non-constrained methods

Reduced computational complexity and faster convergence

Effective confinement of node positions to feasible regions

Abstract

We address the problem of distributed cooperative localization in wireless networks, i.e. nodes without prior position knowledge (agents) wish to determine their own positions. In non-cooperative approaches, positioning is only based on information from reference nodes with known positions (anchors). However, in cooperative positioning, information from other agents is considered as well. Cooperative positioning requires encoding of the uncertainty of agents' positions. To cope with that demand, we employ stochastic inference for localization which inherently considers the position uncertainty of agents. However, stochastic inference comes at the expense of high costs in terms of computation and information exchange. To relax the requirements of inference algorithms, we propose the framework of position-constrained stochastic inference, in which we first confine the positions of nodes to feasible sets. We use convex polygons to impose constraints on the possible positions of agents. By doing so, we enable inference algorithms to concentrate on important regions of the sample space rather than the entire sample space. We show through simulations that increased localization accuracy, reduced computational complexity, and quicker convergence can be achieved when compared to a state-of-the-art non-constrained inference algorithm.