Delay-Accuracy Trade-off in Opportunistic Time-of-Arrival Localization

While designing a positioning network, the localization performance is traditionally the main concern. However, collection of measurements together with channel access methods require a nonzero time, causing a delay experienced by network nodes. This fact is usually neglected in positioning-related literature. In terms of the delay-accuracy trade-off, broadcast schemes have an advantage over unicast, provided nodes can be properly synchronized. In this letter, we analyze the delay-accuracy trade-off, for localization schemes in which the position estimates are obtained based on broadcasted ranging signals. We find that for dense networks, the trade-off is the same for cooperative and noncooperative networks, and cannot exceed a certain threshold value.