Location estimation of radio transmitters based on spatial interpolation of RSS values

Abstract

Detection of potential transmitters' location is one of the vital aspects for efficient practical deployment of secondary spectrum access solutions. It requires accurate and up-to-date radio environmental estimation. Spatial interpolation techniques can allow partial or complete insight into the radio field, the interference and the possible geo-locations of various field transmitters depending on the number of radio measurements performed in sparse locations. This paper presents an effective solution based on spatially interpolated Received Signal Strength (RSS) values for location estimation of radio transmitters, which operates on Radio Interference Field (RIF) maps obtained by interpolating measurement data from N sparsely distributed sensors. In contrast to the known range based localization methods the developed technique also achieves higher computational efficiency. The performance analysis shows that the proposed method is suitable for both outdoor and indoor environments and is capable of reliable detection of multiple sources even for low number of sensors. © 2012 ICST.