Ruan, N.Gao, David2016-06-140166-5316http://hdl.handle.net/1885/103453Sensor network localization problem is to determine the position of the sensor nodes in a network given pairwise distance measurements. Such problem can be formulated as a quartic polynomial minimization via the least squares method. This paper presents a canonical duality theory for solving this challenging problem. It is shown that the nonconvex minimization problem can be reformulated as a concave maximization dual problem over a convex set in a symmetrical matrix space, and hence can be solved efficiently by combining a general (linear or quadratic) perturbation technique with existing optimization techniques. Applications are illustrated by solving some relatively large-scale problems. Our results show that the general sensor network localization problem is not NP-hard unless its canonical dual problem has no solution in its positive definite domain. Fundamental ideas for solving general NP-hard problems are discussed.201410.1016/j.peva.2014.02.0032016-06-14