Characterization of Distance Error with Received Signal Strength Ranging

Location aware applications benefit from accurate position information. The position uncertainty can be reduced through cooperative localization in distributed systems with accurate point-to-point ranging. Received signal strength (RSS) measurement enables low cost, low complexity distance estimation. The distance estimate suffers from two sources of error: RSS estimation error and propagation model error. This paper explores the contribution of each type of error to the overall point-to-point distance error. Prior research focused on the model error which establishes a floor on the distance error. However, the oft ignored RSS estimation error significantly degrades the distance estimation accuracy as the distance increases. By including the affect of RSS estimation error, practical estimation algorithms can be compared. Two proposed RSS estimation algorithms are compared in terms of their impact on distance error.