Dynamic Path Loss Exponent and Distance Estimation in a Vehicular Network Using Doppler Effect and Received Signal Strength

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) can be used for navigation purposes in vehicular environments. However, the limited accuracy of GNSS makes it unsuitable for applications such as vehicle collision avoidance. Improving the positioning accuracy in vehicular networks, Cooperative Positioning (CP) algorithms have emerged. CP algorithms are based on data communication among vehicles and estimation of the distance between the nodes of the network. Among the variety of radio ranging techniques, Received Signal Strength (RSS) is very popular due to its simplicity and lower cost compared to other methods like Time of Arrival (TOA), and Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA). The main drawback of RSS-based ranging is its inaccuracy, which mostly originates from the uncertainty of the path loss exponent. Without knowing the environment path loss exponent, which is a time-varying parameter in the mobile networks, RSS is effectively useless for distance estimation. There are many approaches and techniques proposed in the literature for dynamic estimation of the path loss exponent within a certain environment. Most of these methods are not functional for mobile applications or their efficiency decreases dramatically with increasing mobility of the nodes. In this paper, we propose a method for dynamic estimation of the path loss exponent and distance based on the Doppler Effect and RSS. Since this method is fundamentally based on the Doppler Effect, it can be implemented within networks with mobile nodes. The higher the mobility of the nodes, the better performance of the proposed technique. This contribution is important because vehicles will be equipped with Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) in the near future.