Community RF Sensing for Source Localization

Abstract

This work experimentally demonstrates RF source location estimation error on the order of 50 m, with received signal strength (RSS) measurements, from a network of smartphone users, within 800 m (or more) from the source. This work incorporates careful modeling of the time-varying source transmission power, source antenna directionality (even with a simple 4-parameter model) and different path loss exponents among the various source-user links. More importantly, a vast number of RSS measurements is collected and exploited through the automated community smartphone network. The proposed methodology could be extended to other wireless scenarios.