Efficient Deployment Strategies for Network Localization With Assisting Nodes

Location awareness is crucial for a variety of emerging applications. The accuracy of localization depends heavily on the spatial topology of the network, especially in complex and infrastructure-limited wireless environments. In these environments, assisting nodes can be deployed to achieve desirable localization performance. This paper presents efficient strategies for deploying assisting nodes to improve the localization accuracy of a target agent. Specifically, it provides a methodology to determine a finite set of candidate positions for the assisting nodes. Based on this methodology, we present a convex relaxation method to select near-optimal positions for the assisting nodes and establish a theoretical limit on the localization accuracy provided by assisting nodes. We also propose an approximate dynamic programming algorithm to deploy assisting nodes with amenable complexity. A case study validates the proposed strategies and shows the benefits of deploying assisting nodes for accurate localization.