Characterization of Distance Error with Received Signal Strength Ranging

Abstract—Location aware applications benefit from accurate position information. The position uncertainty can be reduced through cooperative localization in distributed systems with accurate point-to-point ranging. Received signal strength (RSS) measurement enables low cost, low complexity distance estima-tion. The distance estimate suffers from two sources of error: RSS estimation error and propagation model error. This paper explores the contribution of each type of error to the overall point-to-point distance error. Prior research focused on the model error which establishes a floor on the distance error. However, the oft ignored RSS estimation error significantly degrades the distance estimation accuracy. Two practical RSS estimation algorithms are evaluated for their affect on the distance accuracy. I