Collaborative Snapshot Positioning via Distributed Array Processing

This paper presents a novel distributed array processing approach for collaborative snapshot positioning in harsh propagation conditions, targeting the joint exploitation of the GNSS signals received by a set of receivers in nearby locations, and supported by the peer-to-peer ranges between those receivers. In particular, the collaborative position is derived directly in the position domain as the solution of a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) problem constrained by the distributed array structure. The proposed solution allows the reduction of the computational burden by using one receiver as anchor and converting the collaborative positioning problem into a collaborative angle estimation problem. Simulation results in realistic indoor conditions show the potential of the proposed collaborative snapshot estimator for exploiting the spatial diversity introduced by the distributed receivers.