Localizing Unsynchronized Sensors With Unknown Sources


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Date

2023

Publication Type

Journal Article

ETH Bibliography

yes

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Abstract

We propose a method for sensor array self-localization using a set of sources at unknown locations. The sources produce signals whose times of arrival are registered at the sensors. We look at the general case where neither the emission times of the sources nor the reference time frames of the receivers are known. Unlike previous work, our method directly recovers the array geometry, instead of first estimating the timing information. The key component is a new loss function which is insensitive to the unknown timings. We cast the problem as a minimization of a non-convex functional of the Euclidean distance matrix of microphones and sources subject to certain non-convex constraints. After convexification, we obtain a semidefinite relaxation which gives an approximate solution; subsequent refinement on the proposed loss via the Levenberg-Marquardt scheme gives the final locations. Our method achieves state-of-the-art performance in terms of reconstruction accuracy, speed, and the ability to work with a small number of sources and receivers. It can also handle missing measurements and exploit prior geometric and temporal knowledge, for example if either the receiver offsets or the emission times are known, or if the array contains compact subarrays with known geometry.

Publication status

published

Editor

Book title

Volume

71

Pages / Article No.

641 - 654

Publisher

IEEE

Event

Edition / version

Methods

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Date collected

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Subject

Localization; calibration; array signal processing; wireless sensor networks; convex optimzation

Organisational unit

03766 - Pollefeys, Marc / Pollefeys, Marc check_circle

Notes

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