Editing Distance geometry (section)

==Applications==

There are many applications of distance geometry.<ref name=DGAbook/>

In telecommunication networks such as [[Global Positioning System|GPS]], the positions of some sensors are known (which are called anchors) and some of the distances between sensors are also known: the problem is to identify the positions for all sensors.<ref name="sensors" /> [[Hyperbolic navigation]] is one pre-GPS technology that uses distance geometry for locating ships based on the time it takes for signals to reach anchors.

There are many applications in chemistry.<ref name="crippen" /><ref name="blumenthal" /> Techniques such as [[Nuclear magnetic resonance|NMR]] can measure distances between pairs of atoms of a given molecule, and the problem is to infer the 3-dimensional shape of the molecule from those distances.

Some software packages for applications are:

*[http://www.mcs.anl.gov/~more/dgsol/ DGSOL]. Solves large distance geometry problems in [[Molecular modelling|macromolecular modeling]].
*[http://nmr.cit.nih.gov/xplor-nih/ Xplor-NIH]. Based on [[X-PLOR]], to determine the structure of molecules based on data from NMR experiments. It solves distance geometry problems with heuristic methods (such as [[simulated annealing]]) and local search methods (such as [[conjugate gradient method|conjugate gradient minimization]]).
*[http://dasher.wustl.edu/tinker/ TINKER]. Molecular modeling and design. It can solve distance geometry problems.
*[https://sites.google.com/site/nathankrislock/software SNLSDPclique]. MATLAB code for locating sensors in a sensor network based on the distances between the sensors.