Received Signal Strength-Based Wireless Localization via Semidefinite Programming: Noncooperative and Cooperative Schemes

The received signal strength (RSS)-based approach to wireless localization offers the advantage of low cost and easy implementability. To circumvent the nonconvexity of the conventional maximum likelihood (ML) estimator, in this paper, we propose convex estimators specifically for the RSS-based localization problems. Both noncooperative and cooperative schemes are considered. We start with the noncooperative RSS-based localization problem and derive a nonconvex estimator that approximates the ML estimator but has no logarithm in the residual. Next, we apply the semidefinite relaxation technique to the derived nonconvex estimator and develop a convex estimator. To further improve the estimation performance, we append the ML estimator to the convex estimator with the result by the convex estimator as the initial point. We then extend these techniques to the cooperative localization problem. The corresponding Cramer-Rao lower bounds (CRLB) are derived as performance benchmarks. Our proposed convex estimators comply well with the RSS measurement model, and simulation results clearly demonstrate their superior performance for RSS-based wireless localization.