Energy-efficient positioning for cellular networks with unknown path loss exponent

We propose a received signal strength (RSS) based energy-efficient positioning approach for cellular networks with unknown path loss exponent (PLE). A low-complexity searching algorithm is proposed for PLE estimation and a low-complexity lateration algorithm is proposed to provide the searching criteria. Simulation results show that the proposed positioning method achieves an accuracy similar to that of the nonlinear least square (NLS) algorithm, while requiring a much lower complexity.