A Minimum Joint Error Entropy-Based Localization Method in Mixed LOS/NLOS Environments

Abstract

In this paper, we address the time-of-arrival (TOA) based source localization problem in mixed light-of-sight (LOS)/non-light-of-sight (NLOS) environments, where localization accuracy is degraded by both measurement noise and NLOS error. A novel exponential optimization problem is formulated based on new minimum joint error entropy criteria and statistical characteristics of measurement noise. After that, a two-step relaxation method is proposed. In the first step, the original problem is relaxed into a non-exponential problem which maintains the consistency of the solution. The second step is to transform the non-exponential problem into a convex problem. Furthermore, we extend the method to asynchronous networks where the source and anchors are not time synchronized. Numerical results show that the proposed method can provide significant robust performance in synchronous or asynchronous networks, whether in sparse or dense NLOS scenarios.