Position estimation and tracking of an autonomous mobile sensor using received signal strength

• Published in: 2008 International Conference on Intelligent Sensors, Sensor Networks and Information Processing pp. 19 - 24
• Main Authors: Black, T.J., Pathirana, P.N., Nahavandi, S.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01-12-2008
• Subjects: Costs; Global Positioning System; Intelligent sensors; Least squares approximation; Loss measurement; Maximum likelihood estimation; Position measurement; Sensor phenomena and characterization; Sensor systems; Target tracking
• ISBN: 9781424438228; 1424438225
• DOI: 10.1109/ISSNIP.2008.4761956

In this paper, an algorithm for approximating the path of a moving autonomous mobile sensor with an unknown position location using Received Signal Strength (RSS) measurements is proposed. Using a Least Squares (LS) estimation method as an input, a Maximum-Likelihood (ML) approach is used to determine the location of the unknown mobile sensor. For the mobile sensor case, as the sensor changes position the characteristics of the RSS measurements also change; therefore the proposed method adapts the RSS measurement model by dynamically changing the pass loss value alpha to aid in position estimation. Secondly, a Recursive Least-Squares (RLS) algorithm is used to estimate the path of a moving mobile sensor using the Maximum-Likelihood position estimation as an input. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated via simulation and it is shown that this method can accurately determine the position of the mobile sensor, and can efficiently track the position of the mobile sensor during motion.