A new TOA-DOA node localization for mobile ad-hoc networks: Achieving high performance and low complexity

This paper proposes a novel approach for node localization with applications in mobile ad-hoc networks. The network consists of base nodes and target nodes. Base nodes equipped with antenna arrays are capable of localizing target nodes independently via integrated time-of-arrival (TOA) and direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation. In addition, base nodes cooperate to improve the localization accuracy by fusing the estimated target node positions. Kalman filter is integrated with the fusion to further improve the localization performance. The proposed technique is compared to a localization technique based on extended Kalman filter (EKF), which directly fuses the multiple measured TOA-DOA. The comparison criteria include localization accuracy in terms of error cumulative distribution function (CDF) and approximate posterior Cramer Rao lower bound (APCRLB), filter stability and computational complexity. The comparison confirms that the proposed method involves minor computational complexity, while it demonstrates slightly larger PCRLB; however, compared to EKF its stability is higher. This makes it a good candidate for localizing multiple target nodes in mobile ad-hoc networks.