Using a Sensor Network to Localize a Source under Spatially Correlated Shadowing

This paper considers the use of a sensor network to estimate the position of a transmitting radio based on the received signal strength at the sensors. A generic path loss model which includes the effects of spatially correlated shadowing is assumed. A weighted likelihood (WL) estimator is proposed, which can be seen as a simplified minimum mean square error (MMSE) estimator. This estimator can be used for localizing a source in a static scenario or it can provide the initial position estimate of a tracking algorithm. The performance of the WL estimator is simulated, and robustness to erroneous assumptions about path loss exponent, shadowing variance and correlation distance is demonstrated.