We describe the most recent step in the evolution of SIDE/SMURPH and, specifically, a generic model of a wireless channel, which enables to use the package for accurately modeling wireless networks, especially ad-hoc networks consisting of a potentially large number of possibly mobile nodes. The generic nature of the channel model allows the user to introduce functions describing the propagation characteristics of the actual wireless medium, e.g., the impact of distance on signal level and interference, as well as the relationship between the signal-to-interference ratio and the probability of a successful packet reception. To illustrate the capabilities of the supported extensions, we review an example of a shadowing channel model.

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This paper introduces a cost-effective and robust positioning architecture that relies on wireless sensor networks (WSNs) for construction resources localization. The architecture determines the location of mobile sensor nodes by evaluating radio signal strengths (RSS) received by stationary sensor nodes. Only a limited quantity of reference points with known locations and pre-calibrated RSS in relation to pegs are used to lock on the most likely position coordinates of a tag. Indoor experiments were conducted, revealing that acceptable position estimation with 1-2 m accuracy can be obtained with this flexible sensor network architecture. To simulate the dynamic setting of a construction site, controlled experiments were also conducted by parking a car at various locations in the testing environment in order to evaluate the impact of imposed obstacles on location estimation performance. This localization technique is found to produce robust positioning results, thus paving the way for potential deployment in real-world construction sites.