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A practical evaluation of radio signal strength for ranging-based localization

Published: 01 January 2007 Publication History

Abstract

Radio signal strength (RSS) is notorious for being a noisy signal that is difficult to use for ranging-based localization. In this study, we demonstrate that RSS can be used to localize a multi-hop sensor network, and we quantify the effects of various environmental factors on the resulting localization error. We achieve 4.1m error in a 49 node network deployed in a half-football field sized area, demonstrating that RSS localization can be a feasible alternative to solutions like GPS given the right conditions. However, we also show that this result is highly sensitive to subtle environmental factors such as the grass height, radio enclosure, and elevation of the nodes from the ground.

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Published In

cover image ACM SIGMOBILE Mobile Computing and Communications Review
ACM SIGMOBILE Mobile Computing and Communications Review  Volume 11, Issue 1
January 2007
64 pages
ISSN:1559-1662
EISSN:1931-1222
DOI:10.1145/1234822
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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 January 2007
Published in SIGMOBILE Volume 11, Issue 1

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