Error distribution of range measurements in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs)

Previous work predominantly assumes that the pdf of range measurements exhibit Gaussian characteristics. The objective of this paper is to scrutinize this assumption for different environments. Experiments are performed in both outdoor and indoor environments with Line-of-Sight (LOS) and Non-Line-of-Sight (NLOS) conditions using IEEE 802.15.4 compliant devices. These devices consist of a low-cost 2.45 GHz chipset and use Time-of-Flight (TOF) measurement technique for range estimation. Our results and analysis are based on four different statistical Goodness-of-Fit (GOF) tests i.e., a graphical technique, Linear correlation coefficient, Anderson-Darling, and Chi-squared for investigating the Gaussianity of range measurements.