Sensor Selection and Deployment for Range-Only Target Localization Using Optimal Sensor-Target Geometry

This article investigates the sensor selection and deployment strategies for target localization with range-only measurements in 2-D space. Instead of using conventional sensor selection methods, we propose an approach of selecting the subset of all sensors based on the optimal sensor-target geometry, thereby deploying the selected sensors in the optimal geometry to improve the target localization performance. First, the optimal sensor-target geometry is derived by maximizing the determinant of the Fisher information matrix (FIM) with equal angular separation between adjacent sensors. Subsequently, a continuum solution of optimal sensor-target geometry is derived under relaxed angular separation and categorized by the partition cases of the number of sensors. In view of the partition cases, the sensor selection problem is treated as a nonlinear optimization problem and decomposed into several subproblems. Then an efficient algorithm for sensor selection is developed. In order to further improve localization accuracy, we propose an optimal deployment strategy for the selected sensors. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed approach is verified by the illustrative examples.