Distributed collaborative navigation based on rank-defect free network

To improve the navigation performance for network operations, a 3-dimension distributed collaborative navigation method based on rank-defect free network is proposed. Only the nodes’ rough position estimations and their relative ranges are required and the information is shared through wireless communication. The situation is highly addressed where none or only one anchor is deployed. Due to the lack of necessary measurements to fully determine the absolute positions of all agents, the algorithm providing additional constraints is developed to derive the unique solution. The characteristics of the algorithm and the factors that influence the navigation accuracy are discussed. Comprehensive simulations are conducted with different network topologies, number of agents, initial position errors and range measurement uncertainties to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. The influences of various configurations imposed on the accuracy of the collaborative navigation are researched and quantified in the perspective of the network rank-defect.