Mobile station positioning using time difference of arrival and received signal strength

Abstract

In this paper, a new Mobile Station Positioning (MSP) technique is proposed and its performance is evaluated. The proposed technique combines the Received Signal Strength (RSS) and the Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA) techniques. Each RSS measurement yields a circle on which the Mobile Station (MS) may lie. Meanwhile, each TDOA measurement defines a hyperbola on which the MS may reside. The proposed hybrid TDOA/RSS technique uses Taylor series expansion to solve the hyperbolas and circles specified by the distance measurements obtained by the Base Stations (BSs). The MS position is determined based on Linear Least Squares (LLS) method in an iterative fashion. Without hardware modification, the proposed technique reduces location errors compared with either technique separately. Simulation results demonstrate superior performance over both TDOA and RSS techniques.