Three-Dimensional Cooperative Positioning for Internet of Things Provenance

Abstract

A large number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices have been interconnected for information collection and exchange. The data are only meaningful if it is captured at the expected location (i.e., the IoT devices or sensors are not removed accidentally or intentionally). This article presents a new algorithm, which cooperatively locates multiple IoT devices deployed in a 3-D space based on pairwise Euclidean distance measurements. When the distance measurement noises are negligible, a new feasibility problem of rank-3 variables is formulated. We solve the problem using the difference-of-convex (DC) programming to preserve the rank-3 constraints, rather than relaxing the constraints, using semidefinite relaxation (SDR). When the distance measurements are corrupted by additive noises and nonlight-of-sight (NLOS) propagation, a maximum-likelihood estimation (MLE) problem is formulated and transformed to a DC program solved with the rank-3 constraints preserved. Simulation results indicate that the proposed approach can achieve satisfactory accuracy results with a low complexity and strong robustness to the irregular topology, poor connectivity, and measurement errors, as compared to existing SDR-based alternatives.