EEMCS

Full text available as:

PDF 23499 Kb

Abstract

This master thesis is part of the ‘Localisation in Smart Dust Sensor Networks’ project. Smart Dust is the future vision of having many small, light, cheap, dependable, long-lasting, biodegradable network nodes that can even be carried by the wind. The ability of these network nodes to localise themselves is crucial to many applications. Lateration with Ultra-Wideband (UWB) Time of Flight (ToF) range (distance) measurements is widely regarded as the method of choice for localisation in smart dust networks.
In practice, the performance of this localisation technique is impaired by Obstructed Direct Paths (ODPs). An obstruction delays or removes the detectable radio path, causing the real distance to be overestimated. These positively biased range measurements, in turn, cause localisation errors. In this thesis, we perform a survey of known ODP detection techniques, some of which are chiefly tested in simulation. All reviewed techniques consist in evaluating features: functions of one measured channel impulse response. Then we design a measurement set-up with a state-of-the-art UWB transceiver and physical obstacles, to test the known ODP detection techniques.
By combining the features from each technique, we are able to estimate both the bias and the precision of each range measurement. Using this information, we can discard distance measurements that appear to be imprecise. This generally improves the localisation accuracy if the
geometry (the spatial arrangement of nodes) is reasonable; if the geometry is bad, the localisation accuracy worsens slightly.

Export this item as:

• BibTeX
• XML

To correct this item please ask your editor

Repository Staff Only: edit this item