The algebro-geometric study of range maps (Q525495)

This paper features a study of the localization problem for a radiant point source from the viewpoint of algebraic and differential geometry. A source point \(S\) is to be computed from its distances to a set of receivers or, in later sections, from the differences of these distances. The paper is concerned with the calibrated and (mostly with the) deterministic model. This means that the relative position of the receivers is known and the distance measures are not subject to noise. Stochastic considerations are only considered once a solid description of the deterministic geometry has been established. The fundamental object under scrutiny is range maps. These associate to a point the tuple of distances to the receivers. In the most general situation that is considered in this paper, three non-collinear receivers are given. It turns out that the image of the range map is contained in the intersection of the first octant with Kummer's quartic surface. Its geometry is exploited to study invertability of the range map and to obtain a tight polyhedral bounding volume. Moreover, it is related to non-generic situations, to stochastic models, and to the localization problem from range differences.