Joint Neighbor Discovery and Time of Arrival Estimation in Wireless Sensor Networks via OFDMA

This paper introduces joint neighbor discovery (ND) and coarse time-of-arrival (ToA) estimation in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) via orthogonal frequency-division multiple access. In the proposed technique, each sensor node exploits at least one orthogonal sub-carrier as its allocated signature, to respond the ND and ToA estimation requests transmitted by target nodes. The target node utilizes the orthogonality across sub-carriers to detect the transmitted signatures and their corresponding delays. This technique is energy efficient as it avoids multiple transmissions and receptions inherent in traditional ND protocols and ToA estimation techniques in WSN. Moreover, in this technique, network initiation process does not require channel information or time synchronization across sensor nodes. The performance of the proposed method is studied by evaluating the probabilities of false alarm and miss detection of the ND. In addition, ToA estimation error is calculated theoretically and via simulations. Moreover, the impact of available bandwidth on the performance and energy efficiency of ND and ToA estimation are investigated. Simulation results confirm the energy efficiency and the feasibility of the proposed method even at low signal-to-noise ratio regimes and in multi-path and frequency selective channels.