Signal-Multiplexing Ranging for Network Localization

Precise range information is essential for high-precision network localization, where clock drifts will severely degrade the ranging accuracy. Two-way ranging methods are commonly adopted to mitigate those effects in localization networks but requiring a large amount of signal transmission to measure the distance between all pairs of nodes. This paper establishes a network localization framework, which fully mitigates clock drifts using only a minimum number of signal transmissions. The enabler is the proposed signal-multiplexing network ranging (SM-NR) method that minimizes communication overhead via signal multiplexing and eliminates clock drifts by exploiting the interconnections of timestamps. The proposed localization framework also allows some nodes to work in silent mode, of which the positions can be precisely determined without extra ranging signal transmissions. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can achieve high-precision localization in the presence of clock drifts with minimum signal overhead.