Cellular Positioning in an NLOS Environment Applying the COPSO-TVAC Algorithm

Abstract

Non-Line-of-Sight (NLOS) conditions are created by blocking the direct path between the transmitter and receiver, resulting in an increased signal propagation path. To mitigate the Time of Arrival (TOA) measured errors caused by the NLOS phenomenon in cellular radio positioning, we use the Maximum Likelihood (ML) estimation method in this work. The cost function of the ML estimator is usually a high-dimensional, nonlinear, and multimodal function, where standard deterministic optimization techniques cannot solve such problems in real-time and without significant computing resources. In this paper, effective metaheuristic algorithms based on the enhanced variants of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) are applied for the optimal solution of the ML problem and efficiently determine the mobile station location. Time-Varying Acceleration Coefficients (TVAC) are introduced into the standard PSO algorithm to enhance the global search and convergence properties. The resulting algorithm is known as PSO-TVAC. To further improve the performance of the metaheuristic optimization, we suggest adding Chaos Search (CS), Opposition-Based Learning (OBL), and TVAC strategy to the PSO process. The simulation results show that the proposed metaheuristic algorithm named the Chaotic Opposition-based PSO-TVAC (COPSO-TVAC) can reach the Generalized Cramer–Rao Lower Bound (GCRLB) and surpass the original PSO, PSO-TVAC, and the presented conventional optimization algorithms.