Network navigation, encompassing both spatial and
temporal cooperation to locate mobile agents, is a key enabler
for numerous emerging location-based applications. In such
cooperative networks, the positional information obtained by
each agent is a complex compound due to the interaction among
its neighbors. This information coupling may result in poor
performance: algorithms that discard information coupling are
often inaccurate, and algorithms that keep track of all the
neighbors’ interactions are often inefficient. In this paper, we
develop a principled framework to characterize the information
coupling present in network navigation. Specifically, we derive
the equivalent Fisher information matrix for individual agents
as the sum of effective information from each neighbor and the
coupled information induced by the neighbors’ interaction. We
further characterize how coupled information decays with the
network distance in representative case studies. The results of
this work can offer guidelines for the development of distributed
techniques that adequately account for information coupling, and
hence enable accurate and efficient network navigation.RYC-2016-1938
