Target localization via integrated and segregated ranging based on RSS and TOA measurements

Abstract

This work addresses the problem of target localization in adverse non-line-of-sight (NLOS) environments by using received signal strength (RSS) and time of arrival (TOA) measurements. It is inspired by a recently published work in which authors discuss about a critical distance below and above which employing combined RSS-TOA measurements is inferior to employing RSS-only and TOA-only measurements, respectively. Here, we revise state-of-the-art estimators for the considered target localization problem and study their performance against their counterparts that employ each individual measurement exclusively. It is shown that the hybrid approach is not the best one by default. Thus, we propose a simple heuristic approach to choose the best measurement for each link, and we show that it can enhance the performance of an estimator. The new approach implicitly relies on the concept of the critical distance, but does not assume certain link parameters as given. Our simulations corroborate with findings available in the literature for line-of-sight (LOS) to a certain extent, but they indicate that more work is required for NLOS environments. Moreover, they show that the heuristic approach works well, matching or even improving the performance of the best fixed choice in all considered scenarios.