Optimal and robust power allocation for visible light positioning systems under illumination constraints

Abstract

The problem of optimal power allocation among light emitting diode (LED) transmitters in a visible light positioning system is considered for the purpose of improving localization performance of visible light communication (VLC) receivers. Specifically, the aim is to minimize the Cramér-Rao lower bound (CRLB) on the localization error of a VLC receiver by optimizing LED transmission powers in the presence of practical constraints, such as individual and total power limitations and illuminance constraints. The formulated optimization problem is shown to be convex and thus can efficiently be solved via standard tools. We also investigate the case of imperfect knowledge of localization parameters and develop robust power allocation algorithms by taking into account both overall system uncertainty and individual parameter uncertainties related to the location and orientation of the VLC receiver. In addition, we address the total power minimization problem under predefined accuracy requirements to obtain the most energy-efficient power allocation vector for a given CRLB level. Numerical results illustrate the improvements in localization performance achieved by employing the proposed optimal and robust power allocation strategies over the conventional uniform and non-robust approaches.