A comparison of ranging and localization techniques in indoor, urban, and tunnel environments

Abstract: Localization in wireless network sensors is an attractive research area nowadays. It is widely used in many applications e.g., indoor/outdoor asset tracking, intrusion detection, search-and-rescue, road traffic monitoring, and water quality monitoring. An accuracy and robustness to noise are important issues for localization which is needed to study and research to find the best solution. This thesis compares a ranging and localization techniques in indoor, urban and tunnel through a high performance ray-tracing simulator, Wireless InSiteR . Ranging techniques are based on two standard distance related measurement schemes e.g., RSS and TOA. A linearized least squares technique with reference node selection approach is chosen to estimate unknown nodes positions. Indoor and urban area are built-in floor plan and terrain available in simulator program, while tunnel is designed. In general, localization accuracy suffers from multipath and NLOS condition. This thesis also observes characteristic of them from ray-tracing method perspective. Firstly, important simulation parameters such as number ofreflections/diffractions, types of waveform, and types of antenna are analyzed oneach environments. Then, the models for distance estimation based on RSS and TOA measurements are created using measurements in simulated environments. The thesis proposes four scenarios for distance estimation model. They are line-of-sight (LOS), non-line-of-sight (NLOS), combination of LOS and NLOS, and NLOS with obstacle. All four scenarios models are derived along with model error distribution to observe characteristic of noise due to multipath and NLOS condition. Finally, the localization using only LOS condition measurements, is tested on each environment and compared results in term of accuracy.