Mobile Sensor Navigation Using Rapid RF-Based Angle of Arrival Localization

Abstract

Abstract-Over the past decade, wireless sensor networks have advanced in terms of hardware design, communication protocols, resource efficiency, and other aspects. Recently, there has been growing interest in mobile wireless sensor networks, and several small-profile sensing devices that are able to control their own movement have already been developed. Unfortunately, resource constraints inhibit the use of traditional navigation methods, because these typically require bulky, expensive, and sophisticated sensors, substantial memory and processor allocation, and a generous power supply. Therefore, alternative navigation techniques are required. In this paper we present TripNav, a localization and navigation system that is implemented entirely on resource-constrained wireless sensor nodes. Localization is realized using radio interferometric angle of arrival estimation, in which bearings to a mobile node from a small number of infrastructure nodes are estimated based on the observed phase differences of an RF interference signal. The position of the mobile node is then determined using triangulation. A digital compass is also employed to keep the mobile node from deviating from the desired trajectory. We demonstrate using a real-world implementation that a resource-constrained mobile sensor node can accurately perform waypoint navigation with an average position error of 0.95 m.

Energy efficient GPS sensing with cloud offloading

“…In this set of equations, (x, y, z) are unknowns, so we need three satellites to uniquely identify the intersection. In reality, we may have more satellites in view and the problem can be formulated as a constrained optimization problem to minimize the sum of squared angle errors, such as in angle of arrival (AOA) localization solutions [1].…”

“…So, with CTN, the only devicedependent data are the acquisition results, which can be computed with as little as 1ms of raw signal. This is the key observation to move the location computation completely to the cloud.3 CO-GPS DesignThe design of Cloud-Offloaded GPS (CO-GPS) leverages the CTN principle but removes the dependency on nearby1 [27] recommends the use of the highest satellite in view as reference, and provides a good reason for that.…”

CO-GPS: Energy Efficient GPS Sensing with Cloud Offloading

“…In this set of equations, (x, y, z) are unknowns, so we need three satellites to uniquely identify the intersection. In reality, we may have more satellites in view and the problem can be formulated as a constrained optimization problem to minimize the sum of squared angle errors, such as in angle of arrival (AOA) localization solutions [1]. There are several uncertainties in our setting that make the problem more challenging.…”

Towards WSN-aided navigation for vehicles in smart cities: An application case study

“…The triangulation based positioning problems have been extensively studied in the context of WSN 1 [7] [8] [9] and mobile robot navigation [10] [11] [12].…”