Ranging solutions for Internet of Things (IoT) localization applications seek to provide high accuracy with low cost of implementation. Among candidate IoT technologies that may fit this criterion, Bluetooth is a desirable choice as Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) support is ubiquitous in modern smartphones, providing low implementation costs and low power consumption. Recent advancements in BLE ranging technology employ the Multi-Carrier Phase Difference technique which takes two-way channel frequency response (CFR) measurements. However, accurate ranging with these measurements is challenging due to many closely spaced multipath components from squaring the one-way CFR, a single or low number of snapshots, and model imperfections that arise in practical scenarios. To overcome these challenges, we propose a data-driven support vector regression (SVR) approach. Using real-world BLE measurements, our proposed SVR method demonstrates decimeter-level accuracy with single antenna devices, whereas Multiple Signal Classification (MUSIC), a popular model-based method, requires multiple antennas to obtain comparable performance. Moreover, we show robustness in different multipath environments including indoor, outdoor, and non-line-of-sight conditions, we determine generalization capabilities with training size, and we analytically establish the reduction in computational complexity compared to MUSIC.
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