Anchor free node tracking using ranges, odometry, and multidimensional scaling

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of estimating the positions of nodes in a mobile network over time, when pre-surveyed anchor nodes are not available. We do this by employing both inter-node range measurements and odometry data. Both types of measurement data are applied within the multidimensional scaling paradigm, which maps pairwise dissimilarity values into node coordinates. The mathematical treatment is presented, along with several advantages of our proposed approach. We demonstrate its performance through simulation across various parameter values. Further, we show the performance using real range and odometry data gathered from our CSOT mobile robot testbed.