Network Operation Strategies for Efficient Localization and Navigation

Reliable and accurate position information is of great importance for many mass-market and emerging applications. Network localization and navigation (NLN) is a promising paradigm to provide such information ubiquitously, where a network of nodes is used to aid in localizing its members. This paper explores various network operation strategies, which play an essential role in NLN as they determine the network lifetime and localization accuracy. Efficient network operation requires several functionalities, including node prioritization, node activation, and node deployment. The roles of these functionalities are described and different techniques for implementing respective functionalities via algorithmic modules are introduced. Some important concepts such as cooperative operation, robustness guarantee, and distributed design in the development of the network operation strategies are also introduced. Finally, numerical results are provided to demonstrate the localization performance improvement attributed to the optimized network operation strategies.