Cooperative localization in a distributed base station scenario

Previous work about cooperative localization in cellular networks usually consider a centralized processor (CP) is available for location estimation. This paper consider cooperative localization in a distributed base station (BS) scenario, where there is no CP, and the distributed BSs are responsible for location estimation. In this scenario, Global Positioning System (GPS) enable mobile terminals (MTs), i.e., located MTs, are employed as reference nodes. Then, several located MTs can help to find the locations of an un-located MT, by estimating the distance between the un-located MT using received signal strength techniques. Two localization approaches are proposed, the first approach requires only one BS to collect all the assistance information for localization and estimate the location. The second approach distribute the location estimation task to several BSs. The communication overhead between distributed BSs are investigated for these two approaches. Moreover, by taking into account the effect of imperfect location knowledge of the located MTs, the accuracy limits of both approaches are derived. The simulation results shows that compared with the first approach, the second approach can reduce the communication overhead between distributed BSs with the paid of accuracy. © 2011 IEEE