Distributed positioning in ad hoc networks: a Cramer-Rao bound analysis

In future applications of sensor networking technology it is envisioned that nodes would able to determine their geographical position by measuring the range differences between one another in a collaborative fashion. The aim of this paper is to provide quantitative expressions that can be used both to facilitate an understanding for why such distributed positioning works, and to assess the ultimately achievable accuracy in practice. Specifically, we compute the Cramer-Rao bound on the positioning accuracy, under different assumptions on the network synchronization. Numerical examples illustrate our results.