Multistatic Localization of a Moving Object Aided by Calibration Objects: Analysis and Solutions

Abstract

It often occurs in multistatic localization systems that the direct paths between an unknown position transmitter and the receivers are absent or blocked. Moreover, the receivers may not be able to time-synchronize with one another. To enable the effective localization of a moving object, we introduce calibration objects to generate additional measurements that can help remove the receiver-dependent synchronization offsets and provide information about the transmitter position. First, we analyze the localizability of the object position and velocity, as well as the transmitter position, in relation to the number of calibration objects. Based on the localizability analysis, we formulate two semidefinite programming problems and develop a closed-form solution, and utilize their combinations to effectively solve the localization problems with different numbers of calibration objects. Additionally, the theoretical mean squared errors (MSEs) of these localization solutions are derived, demonstrating that they can achieve the Cramér-Rao lower bound (CRLB) performance. Finally, simulations validate both the theoretical findings and the good performance of the proposed solutions.