Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Degree

Master of Engineering Science

Program

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Supervisor

Dr. Xianbin Wang

2nd Supervisor

Dr. Anestis Dounavis

Joint Supervisor

Abstract

Localization has become a key enabling technology in many emerging wireless applications and services. One of the most challenging problems in wireless localization technologies is that the performance is easily affected by the signal propagation environment. When the direct path between transmitter and receiver is obstructed, the signal measurement error for the localization process will increase significantly. Considering this problem, we first propose a novel algorithm which can automatically detect and remove the obstruction and improve the localization performance in complex environment. Besides the environmental dependency, the accuracy of target location estimation is highly sensitive to the positions of reference nodes. In this thesis, we also study on the reference node placement, and derive an optimum deployment scheme which can provide the best localization accuracy. Another challenge of wireless localization is due to insufficient number of reference nodes available in the target's communication range. In this circumstance, we finally utilize the internal sensors in today's smartphones to provide additional information for localization purpose, and propose a novel algorithm which can combine the location dependent parameters measured from sensors and available reference nodes together. The combined localization algorithm can overcome the error accumulation from sensor with the help of only few number of reference nodes.

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