Experimental evaluation of reducing ranging-error based on receive signal strength indication in wireless sensor networks

Node localisation technology is one of the most important technologies in wireless sensor networks. Receive signal strength indication (RSSI) technology is adopted to measure the distance between the sensor nodes in this paper, with comprehensive consideration of practicability, power consumption, cost and hardware. Reducing ranging-error has been the key to location technology based on RSSI. Considering the random and systematic error of ranging, three schemes to reduce the ranging-error are presented: outlier RSSI values processing, online modelling and error compensation. Through a large number of experiments under different conditions, it is demonstrated that the proposed three methods have better ranging performances, compared with the typical processing.