Energy-Efficient Indoor Localization Based on Wireless Sensor Networks

This thesis deals with the improvement of the performance of WSN-based localization systems. Particularly, our focus is to increase the energy efficiency of the battery powered nodes. For this, we investigate the main features in three areas of a localization system: the measurement process, the position estimation and the communication protocols.

Experiments were conducted to evaluate the accuracy of the Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) and Phase of Arrival (POA) ranging methods. Based on the measurements, novel distance error models are derived for the POA ranging method.

The position accuracy of several localization algorithms are evaluated in different scenarios by using simulated and real data.

We designed a communication protocol called Highly Configurable Protocol (HCP), which is designed for RSSI-based localization systems. In this thesis we also present HCP version 2 (HCPv2), where the nodes can use both RSSI and POA measurements for the position estimation.