Realizability of Planar Point Embeddings from Angle Measurements
This addresses the localization problem in robotics and sensor networks, but appears incremental as it builds on Euclidean distance matrix theory.
The paper tackles the problem of determining when a set of inner-angle measurements corresponds to a realizable planar point embedding without known anchor locations, finding provably necessary constraints and conjecturing sufficiency, with confirmation through numerical simulations and applications to denoising and reconstruction.
Localization of a set of nodes is an important and a thoroughly researched problem in robotics and sensor networks. This paper is concerned with the theory of localization from inner-angle measurements. We focus on the challenging case where no anchor locations are known. Inspired by Euclidean distance matrices, we investigate when a set of inner angles corresponds to a realizable point set. In particular, we find linear and non-linear constraints that are provably necessary, and we conjecture also sufficient for characterizing realizable angle sets. We confirm this in extensive numerical simulations, and we illustrate the use of these constraints for denoising angle measurements along with the reconstruction of a valid point set.