Iterative constrained weighted least squares estimator for TDOA and FDOA positioning of multiple disjoint sources in the presence of sensor position and velocity uncertainties

Abstract

Sensor position and velocity uncertainties are known to be able to degrade the source localization accuracy significantly. This paper focuses on the problem of locating multiple disjoint sources using time differences of arrival (TDOAs) and frequency differences of arrival (FDOAs) in the presence of sensor position and velocity errors. First, the explicit Cramér–Rao bound (CRB) expression for joint estimation of source and sensor positions and velocities is derived under the Gaussian noise assumption. Subsequently, we compare the localization accuracy when multiple-source positions and velocities are determined jointly and individually based on the obtained CRB results. The performance gain resulted from multiple-target cooperative positioning is also quantified using the orthogonal projection matrix. Next, the paper proposes a new estimator that formulates the localization problem as a quadratic programming with some indefinite quadratic equality constraints. Due to the non-convex nature of the optimization problem, an iterative constrained weighted least squares (ICWLS) method is developed based on matrix QR decomposition, which can be achieved through some simple and efficient numerical algorithms. The newly proposed iterative method uses a set of linear equality constraints instead of the quadratic constraints to produce a closed-form solution in each iteration. Theoretical analysis demonstrates that the proposed method, if converges, can provide the optimal solution of the formulated non-convex minimization problem. Moreover, its estimation mean-square-error (MSE) is able to reach the corresponding CRB under moderate noise level. Simulations are included to corroborate and support the theoretical development in this paper.