A Joint Positioning and Communication Paradigm Using Relay Nodes as Anchors

Dual-role nodes that can work both as relays and also as anchors for joint communication and source localization are proposed. Selection and power allocation of a few dual-role nodes in the presence of many nodes in the network are considered. A novel approach is proposed that relies on maximizing the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the destination node under a source localization constraint. Bounds on the number of nodes needed to achieve a certain localization performance, a concave bound on SNR at the destination node and a practical algorithm to select the dual-role nodes are presented. To estimate the source location using non- line-of-sight range measurements, a new algorithm using semi- definite programing with relaxation followed by majorization- minimization is presented. The results demonstrate excellent promise for obtaining joint improved bit error rate and mean- squared error localization performance by selecting nodes based on combined SNR and localization constraint.