Cooperative Distance Classification using an IEEE 802.15.4-Compliant Transceiver

In this paper we consider the problem of how several observer nodes can cooperatively make reliable judgements about one mobile node. These judgments shall not only cover the mere presence or absence of the mobile node, but also include coarse indications about the distance of the mobile node to the observers. To this end, we present and investigate in this paper a scheme for distance classification. The results show that our scheme greatly reduces the number of times where the mobile node is classified as "absent" and furthermore provides reliable classifications into one of a set of pre-defined distances, provided this pre-defined set is small enough.