MoteTrack: a robust, decentralized approach to RF-based location tracking

Abstract

Abstract. In this paper, we present a robust, decentralized approach to RF-based location tracking. Our system, called MoteTrack, is based on low-power radio transceivers coupled with a modest amount of computation and storage capabilities. MoteTrack does not rely upon any back-end server or network infrastructure: the location of each mobile node is computed using a received radio signal strength signature from numerous beacon nodes to a database of signatures that is replicated across the beacon nodes themselves. This design allows the system to function despite significant failures of the radio beacon infrastructure. In our deployment of MoteTrack, consisting of 20 beacon nodes distributed across our Computer Science building, we achieve a 50 th percentile and 80 th percentile location-tracking accuracy of 2 meters and 3 meters respectively. In addition, MoteTrack can tolerate the failure of up to 60% of the beacon nodes without severely degrading accuracy, making the system suitable for deployment in highly volatile conditions. We present a detailed analysis of MoteTrack's performance under a wide range of conditions, including variance in the number of obstructions, beacon node failure, radio signature perturbations, receiver sensitivity, and beacon node density.

Modeling and Optimizing Positional Accuracy Based on Hyperbolic Geometry for the Adaptive Radio Interferometric Positioning System

“…These techniques exploit the decaying model of electronic-magnetic field to translate RSSI to the corresponding distance [6] [7] [9]. Also, the frequency bands used for transmission vary.…”

“…To address this need, there have been many sensor network localization systems utilizing different sensing techniques, e.g., MoteTrack [9], Cricket [10], Spotlight [13], APIT [14], ENSBox [16], etc. Among them, the radio interferometric positioning (RIP) method from the NEST project [1] has shown a promising, exciting location sensing technique for sensor network applications.…”

Using Height Sensors for Biometric Identification in Multi-resident Homes

“…It can be an inconvenience to in-home residents for longterm deployments. In our past experience with deployments, and while trying to use MoteTrack [13] wireless tags to collect ground truth in this study, users frequently forget to carry their tag, especially immediately after waking up or showering. Automatically reminding residents to carry the device is an option, but we believe such an approach is intrusive and inconveniences the user for long-term applications such as elderly medical monitoring.…”

“…The ultrasonic sensors were deployed on doorways of rooms similar to our controlled experiments, and can be seen in figure 4. In addition to the ultrasonic sensors, we deployed the motetrack indoor localization system [13] in all homes to get ground truth locations of residents. Motetrack is a tag and track approach to localization that requires each resident to carry a mote.…”

“…Existing innovative implementations that perform resident identification and tracking have several advantages, but also have drawbacks. Some approaches are incovenient because they require the user to wear a tag [13,21], or to manually trigger a biometric sensor such as a thumbprint or retina scanner [18]. Some systems require cameras for gait, form, or face recognition [16], but cameras are often perceived as invasive because they can be used to collect much more information than just the user's identity [11].…”