Wireless indoor positioning systems have become very popular in recent years. These systems have been successfully used in many applications such as asset tracking and inventory management. This paper provides an overview of the existing wireless indoor positioning solutions and attempts to classify different techniques and systems. Three typical location estimation schemes of triangulation, scene analysis, and proximity are analyzed. We also discuss location fingerprinting in detail since it is used in most current system or solutions. We then examine a set of properties by which location systems are evaluated, and apply this evaluation method to survey a number of existing systems. Comprehensive performance comparisons including accuracy, precision, complexity, scalability, robustness, and cost are presented.

Survey of Wireless Indoor Positioning Techniques and Systems

In today's competitive industry marketplace, the companies face growing demands to improve process efficiencies, comply with environmental regulations, and meet corporate financial objectives. Given the increasing age of many industrial systems and the dynamic industrial manufacturing market, intelligent and low-cost industrial automation systems are required to improve the productivity and efficiency of such systems. The collaborative nature of industrial wireless sensor networks (IWSNs) brings several advantages over traditional wired industrial monitoring and control systems, including self-organization, rapid deployment, flexibility, and inherent intelligent-processing capability. In this regard, IWSN plays a vital role in creating a highly reliable and self-healing industrial system that rapidly responds to real-time events with appropriate actions. In this paper, first, technical challenges and design principles are introduced in terms of hardware development, system architectures and protocols, and software development. Specifically, radio technologies, energy-harvesting techniques, and cross-layer design for IWSNs have been discussed. In addition, IWSN standards are presented for the system owners, who plan to utilize new IWSN technologies for industrial automation applications. In this paper, our aim is to provide a contemporary look at the current state of the art in IWSNs and discuss the still-open research issues in this field and, hence, to make the decision-making process more effective and direct.

/pdf/industrial-wireless-sensor-networks-challenges-design-1p149rqzw2.pdf

Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks: Challenges, Design Principles, and Technical Approaches

The collaborative and low-cost nature of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) brings significant advantages over traditional communication technologies used in today's electric power systems. Recently, WSNs have been widely recognized as a promising technology that can enhance various aspects of today's electric power systems, including generation, delivery, and utilization, making them a vital component of the next-generation electric power system, the smart grid. However, harsh and complex electric-power-system environments pose great challenges in the reliability of WSN communications in smart-grid applications. This paper starts with an overview of the application of WSNs for electric power systems along with their opportunities and challenges and opens up future work in many unexploited research areas in diverse smart-grid applications. Then, it presents a comprehensive experimental study on the statistical characterization of the wireless channel in different electric-power-system environments, including a 500-kV substation, an industrial power control room, and an underground network transformer vault. Field tests have been performed on IEEE 802.15.4-compliant wireless sensor nodes in real-world power delivery and distribution systems to measure background noise, channel characteristics, and attenuation in the 2.4-GHz frequency band. Overall, the empirical measurements and experimental results provide valuable insights about IEEE 802.15.4-compliant sensor network platforms and guide design decisions and tradeoffs for WSN-based smart-grid applications.

/pdf/opportunities-and-challenges-of-wireless-sensor-networks-in-2px4ztn9v2.pdf

Opportunities and Challenges of Wireless Sensor Networks in Smart Grid

This paper analyzes the causes of packet loss in a 38-node urban multi-hop 802.11b network. The patterns and causes of loss are important in the design of routing and error-correction protocols, as well as in network planning.The paper makes the following observations. The distribution of inter-node loss rates is relatively uniform over the whole range of loss rates; there is no clear threshold separating "in range" and "out of range." Most links have relatively stable loss rates from one second to the next, though a small minority have very bursty losses at that time scale. Signal-to-noise ratio and distance have little predictive value for loss rate. The large number of links with intermediate loss rates is probably due to multi-path fading rather than attenuation or interference.The phenomena discussed here are all well-known. The contributions of this paper are an understanding of their relative importance, of how they interact, and of the implications for MAC and routing protocol design.

/pdf/link-level-measurements-from-an-802-11b-mesh-network-2y0lbcciyz.pdf

Link-level measurements from an 802.11b mesh network

There has been a great deal of material in the area of discrete-time transforms that has been published in recent years. This book does an excellent job of presenting important aspects of such material in a clear manner. The book has 11 chapters and a very useful appendix. Seven of these chapters are essentially devoted to the Fourier series/transform, discrete Fourier transform, fast Fourier transform (FFT), and applications of the FFT in the area of spectral estimation. Chapters 8 through 10 deal with many other discrete-time transforms and algorithms to compute them. Of these transforms, the KarhunenLoeve, the discrete cosine, and the Walsh-Hadamard transform are perhaps the most well-known. A lucid discussion of number theoretic transforms i5 presented in Chapter 11. This reviewer feels that the authors have done a fine job of compiling the pertinent material and presenting it in a concise and clear manner. There are a number of problems at the end of each chapter, an appreciable number of which are challenging. The authors have included a comprehensive set of references at the end of the book. In brief, this book is a valuable contribution to the general areas of signal processing and communications. It can be used for a graduate level course in perhaps two ways. One would be to cover the first seven chapters in great detail. The other would be to cover the whole book by focussing on different topics in a selective manner. This book  by  Elliott  and Rao  is extremely  useful to researchers/engineers who are working  in the areas of signal processing and communications. It i s also an excellent reference book, and hence a valuable addition to one’s library

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/5/31347/01457444.pdf

Multirate digital signal processing

The design and simulation of coding schemes, medium access control (MAC), and link-layer protocols for future industrial wireless local area networks can be supported by some understanding of the statistical properties of the bit error patterns delivered by a wireless link (which is an ensemble of transmitter, channel, receiver, modems). The authors present results of bit error measurements taken with an IEEE 802.11-compliant radio modem in an industrial environment. In addition to reporting the most important results, they draw some conclusions for the design of MAC and link-layer protocols. Furthermore, they show that the popular Gilbert/Elliot model and a modified version of it are a useful tool for simulating bit errors on a wireless link, despite their simplicity and failure to match certain measured statistics.

/pdf/measurements-of-a-wireless-link-in-an-industrial-environment-42i2saedmj.pdf

Measurements of a wireless link in an industrial environment using an IEEE 802.11-compliant physical layer

This publication explores the degree of accuracy to which the propagation delay of WLAN packets can be measured using today's commercial, inexpensive equipment. The aim is to determine the distance between two wireless nodes for location sensing applications. We conducted experiments in which we measured the time difference between sending a data packet and receiving the corresponding immediate acknowledgement. We found the propagation delays correlate closely with distance, having only a measurement error of a few meters. Furthermore, they are more precise than received signal strength indications.

To overcome the low time resolution of the given hardware timers, various statistical methods are applied, developed and analyzed. For example, we take advantage of drifting clocks to determine propagation delays that are forty times smaller than the clocks' quantization resolution. Our approach also determines the frequency offset between remote and local crystal clocks.

/pdf/measuring-round-trip-times-to-determine-the-distance-between-2qudlitvyx.pdf

Measuring round trip times to determine the distance between WLAN nodes

{TKN EDCA} Model for ns/2

In this paper we present an algorithm that measures the round trip times of IEEE 802.11 MAC packets in order to trilaterate WLAN nodes.We show that if we use packet sequences (e.g., RTS, CTS, DATA and ACK) instead of packet pairs (e.g., DATA and ACK), the TOA measurements can be implemented more easily and a higher observation rate can be achieved. In addition, the receiver and any listening third node can measure the round trip times. We present the open source software ldquoGoodtryrdquo that implements this algorithm and overcomes the low clock resolution and other implementation constraints of off-the-shelf IEEE 802.11 cards. Experimental results show that our software-based trilateration has an accuracy of about four meters.

/pdf/four-way-toa-and-software-based-trilateration-of-ieee-802-11-5d5llftsr8.pdf

Four-way TOA and software-based trilateration of IEEE 802.11 devices

The continuous tracking of mobile systems via active or passive RFID is a desirable but difficult to achieve objective. In this paper, we present our experimental results of positioning techniques using passive UHF RFID, Bluetooth, and WLAN. We thereby employ three orthogonal measuring techniques: detection rates, signal strength, and round trip time. The orthogonality of the methods is designed to achieve robustness to noise and unforeseen changes in the surroundings. Moreover, due to their different read ranges, the technologies can complement each other at different scales of the environment.

/pdf/indoor-positioning-via-three-different-rf-technologies-44vrq05ov0.pdf

Christian Hoene

Papers

Measurements of a wireless link in an industrial environment using an IEEE 802.11-compliant physical layer

Measuring round trip times to determine the distance between WLAN nodes

{TKN EDCA} Model for ns/2

Four-way TOA and software-based trilateration of IEEE 802.11 devices

Indoor Positioning via Three Different RF Technologies