Estimating position of mobile terminals from path loss measurements with survey data

Abstract

Abstract Estimating the position of mobile terminals is an important problem for cellular networks. A low cost method of locating the mobile terminal is to use measurements of the radio path loss. The distribution of radio path loss is, unfortunately, a non‐linear function of the mobile terminal location. The non‐linearity results from large obstacles to radio‐wave propagation such as buildings or hills. This paper demonstrates how the conditional density of the location given measured path loss can be approximated as a sum of kernel density functions based on radio propagation data collected from propagation surveys or estimated from computer models. Using these approximate density functions an accurate location estimate of a mobile terminal can be estimated from measured path loss values contaminated by measurement noise. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.