Experimental analysis of RSSI for distance and position estimation

Abstract

In wireless sensor network (WSN), position awareness (localization) of the sensor nodes is necessary to exploit the communication and to provide the meaningful information about their surroundings. Here Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) technique is used as it requires no extra hardware and can be used for both indoor and outdoor environment. RSSI is having limitations such as high randomness due to fading and shadowing. This makes difficulties in establishing exact relationship between RSSI value and distance. In this paper we propose the method of creating database by using Split Range Technique (SRT) to estimate the approximate distance between two nodes. Using this database, position estimation has been done. For this Adaptive n-Triangle algorithm is implemented. Present results of RSSI shows the approximate positioning of the sensor node with the error estimation of about 5-10%. The experiment can be extended to show the predicted path of a moving object which is being identified by sensors.