Position Information from Single-Bounce Reflections

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how single-bounce reflections contribute to target positioning accuracy in single-anchor setups, considering prior environmental knowledge and providing geometric insights and numerical demonstrations.

Contribution

It introduces a framework for understanding the Fisher information from single-bounce reflections, highlighting the role of prior knowledge and geometric factors in positioning.

Findings

Single-bounce reflections provide position information parallel to the reflecting surface.

Prior knowledge significantly influences the information content of reflections.

Numerical examples illustrate the potential impact on positioning accuracy.

Abstract

In the context of positioning a target with a single-anchor, this contribution focuses on the Fisher information about the position, orientation and clock offset of the target provided by single-bounce reflections. The availability of prior knowledge of the target's environment is taken into account via a prior distribution of the position of virtual anchors, and the rank, intensity and direction of provided information is studied. We show that when no prior knowledge is available, single-bounce reflections offer position information in the direction parallel to the reflecting surface, irrespective of the target's and anchor's locations. We provide a geometrically intuitive explanation of the results and present numerical examples demonstrating their potential implications.