DE ²: localization based on the rotating RSS using a single beacon

Wireless localization technology has become an important research area of pervasive computing applications. This paper presents \(DE ^{2 }\) (direction estimation and distance estimation), a wireless localization approach that is responsive to the scenario where only a single beacon is available to locate multiple position-unknown targets. Unlike the previous work which needs a priori knowledge of the scenario during the training phase by manual recording (taking significant human efforts), or uses a certain number of beacons during the localization phase to reach a certain accuracy (leading to high energy consumption and reducing network lifecycle), \(DE ^{2 }\) leverages a single beacon without many prior human efforts to locate multiple targets. The intuition underlying \(DE ^{2 }\) is that, direction and distance constraints between an unknown position and the single beacon are adequate to determine the unknown position. When a person rotates around an RF receiver (the single beacon), the human body acts as a signal-blocking obstacle. It causes the signal from a transmitter (position-unknown) to the single receiver to attenuate in a certain scope. The blocking effect caused by human body can be utilized to obtain the direction constraint between the unknown position and the single beacon. And we call the signal strength which is perceived by the receiver during the person’s rotation as rotating received signal strength (RSS). Moreover, a corresponding distance constraint is also concluded in the rotating RSS according to the RF propagation model. \(DE ^{2 }\) pushes the limit of minimum beacons needed for localization without much pre-configuration effort. To demonstrate the utility of \(DE ^{2 }\), we implement \(DE ^{2 }\) in real-world single beacon wireless networks. The results show that these applications can significantly benefit from \(DE ^{2 }\).