A novel divide and conquer approach for resolving ambiguities in wireless localization

Abstract

Localization of wireless nodes is widely used in automation. Time difference of arrival (TDOA)-based schemes have a good trade-off between implementation effort and attainable precision. Calculating the position of the mobile nodes is challenging due to a hyperbolic multilateration problem where the geometry between reference and mobile nodes is often degenerate. For unsuitable initial positions, iterative algorithms can fail, which favors direct methods. Exact direct methods are computationally efficient, but due to geometric ambiguities they can give a valid pair of solutions. In this work, we present a generally applicable divide and conquer approach which resolves these ambiguities and does not require an initial position.