Data fusion for relative localization of wireless mobile nodes

Monitoring teams of mobile nodes is becoming crucial in a growing number of activities. When it is not possible to use fix references or external measurements, a practicable solution is to derive relative positions from local communication. In this work, we propose an anchor-free Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) method aimed at small multi-robot teams. Information from Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) mounted on the nodes and processed with a Kalman Filter are used to estimate the robot dynamics, thus increasing the quality of RSSI measurements. A Multidimensional Scaling algorithm is then used to compute the network topology from improved RSSI data provided by all nodes. A set of experiments performed on data acquired from a real scenario show the improvements over RSSI-only localization methods. With respect to previous work only an extra IMU is required, and no constraints are imposed on its placement, like with camera-based approaches. Moreover, no a-priori knowledge of the environment is required and no fixed anchor nodes are needed.