Global strong convexity and characterization of critical points of time-of-arrival-based source localization

Abstract

In this work, we study a least-squares formulation of the source localization problem given time-of-arrival measurements. We show that the formulation, albeit non-convex in general, is globally strongly convex under certain condition on the geometric configuration of the anchors and the source and on the measurement noise. Next, we derive a characterization of the critical points of the least-squares formulation, leading to a bound on the maximum number of critical points under a very mild assumption on the measurement noise. In particular, the result provides a sufficient condition for the critical points of the least-squares formulation to be isolated. Prior to our work, the isolation of t..