Fisher-Information-Based Cooperative Sensor Node Pre-Selection for UWB-Aided GNSS-Denied UAV Swarm Localization Under Heterogeneous Ranging Noise

Ultra-wideband (UWB) inter-node ranging provides relative-distance constraints for cooperative localization in GNSS-denied UAV swarms, but dense candidate networks can exceed the available ranging slots, communication bandwidth, computation, and energy. This paper proposes a Fisher-information-based cooperative sensor node pre-selection method under heterogeneous ranging noise. All mobile nodes remain in the localization state, while the selected nodes induce the active ranging-link set. Selected-node, induced-link, ranging-slot, and normalized general-resource budgets are represented separately. Using predicted geometry and estimated link-quality weights, a gauge-free normalized Fisher information matrix combines link geometry, link-quality-dependent weights, and topology-induced coupling. A trace-based generalized GDOP (G-GDOP) criterion is optimized by a two-stage greedy heuristic with recursive matrix updates. The experiments show that G-GDOP is a local observability and information-quality metric rather than a direct predictor of topology-level nonlinear recovery error. Within the same topology, normalized local RMSE increased from 0.698 [0.673, 0.752] in the Low G-GDOP group to 1.014 [0.999, 1.068] and 1.980 [1.806, 2.180] in the Medium and High groups. Increasing the selected-node budget from K = 6 to K = 20 reduced median RMSE from 0.550 to 0.148 m while increasing the median induced-link number from 109 to 214. Additional tests covered Gaussian and heterogeneous ranging noise, deterministic NLOS bias, online link-weight errors, and predicted-position uncertainty. Direct Inversion and Woodbury Updating were numerically equivalent within a predefined tolerance in all 24 size–regime combinations, and a Woodbury runtime advantage was supported in 20 conditions. The proposed framework therefore provides an interpretable resource-aware pre-selection module without implying an unconditional real-time guarantee.