Positioning algorithms for cooperative networks in the presence of an unknown turn-around time

This paper addresses the problem of single node positioning in cooperative network using hybrid two-way time-of-arrival and time-difference-of-arrival where, the turn-around time at the target node is unknown. Considering the turn-around time as a nuisance parameter, the derived maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) brings a difficult global optimization problem due to local minima in the cost function of the MLE. To avoid drawbacks in solving the MLE, we obtain a linear two-step estimator using non-linear pre-processing which is algebraic and closed-form in each step. To compare different methods, Cramér-Rao lower bound (CRLB) is derived. Simulation results confirm that the proposed linear estimator attains the CRLB for sufficiently high signal-to-noise ratios.