A practical distance estimator through distributed RSSI/LQI processing — An experimental study

The received signal strength indicator (RSSI) and the link quality indicator (LQI) are metrics that are commonly available in commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) sensor hardware. The former has been widely regarded as a cheap alternative for distance estimation and node localization. However, experimentally RSSI has been shown to behave in an inconsistent manner, even in ideal scenarios, and serve at best as bounds for distances. The latter is effectively a measure of chip error rate, and can be used to identify higher quality transmissions, and the combination RSSI/LQI can be expected to make more precise estimates with the tradeoff of increased delay and estimation cost. In this paper, we describe our distance estimation system that uses these two metrics and test our hypothesis purely through experimental measurements using sensor nodes. Results indicate that such a combination of metrics can be used to provide a tighter bound on the range of estimated distances.