Performance of POA-based sensor nodes for localization purposes

Abstract

In this paper, the accuracy of the "Phase-of-Arrival" (POA) ranging method is investigated in comparison with the well-known Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) method. The IEEE 802.15.4-compliant transceiver AT86RF233 [1] [2], which forms part of a low-power sensor node, was used to take measurements in different scenarios and evaluate both methods. Additionally, a localization system based on a sensor network was built and a new measurement campaign was carried out to investigate the position accuracy of three low-complexity localization algorithms, i.e. Multilateration, Extended-Min-Max (E-Min-Max) and Weighted Centroid Localization (WCL). The results show that it is possible to have average position errors smaller than 1m using the POA method for distance estimation and the E-Min-Max localization algorithm. Index Terms: Wireless Sensor Network, Phase of Arrival, Received Signal Strength Indicator, Localization. © 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland.