UAV-Mounted RIS-Aided Multi-Target Localization System: An Efficient Sparse-Reconstruction-Based Approach

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) technology is increasingly gaining attention in localization systems due to its flexibility and mobility. However, traditional localization techniques often fail in complex environments where line-of-sight paths are obstructed. To address this challenge, this paper presents an innovative UAV-assisted high-precision multi-target localization system. The system utilizes UAVs equipped with Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces to create a reflective signal path, allowing a receiver sensor to capture these signals, creating favorable conditions for multi-target localization. Exploiting the sparsity of signals, we introduce a direct positioning algorithm that leverages Atomic Norm Minimization (ANM) to estimate the target’s location. To address the high complexity of traditional ANM methods, we propose a novel Coyote-ANM-based direct localization (CADL) approach. This method combines the coyote optimization algorithm with the alternating direction method of multipliers to achieve high-accuracy positioning with reduced computational complexity. Simulation results across various signal-to-noise ratio scenarios demonstrate that the proposed algorithm significantly improves localization accuracy, achieving lower root mean square error values and faster execution times compared to traditional methods.