Evaluation of impact factors on RSS accuracy for localization and tracking applications in sensor networks

The use of Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI), obtained automatically with the received messages in most sensor radios, is a popular way for estimating the location of a mobile wireless object. The great variation of Received Signal Strength (RSS), which may result in inaccurate estimations, is compensated by the fact that RSS does not require any additional hardware, and may reduce the sensor node power consumption, size and cost. The present work investigates the impact of variety of parameters on RSS by experimenting with Tmote Sky nodes in real-field outdoor environments. Besides the operating frequency, the transmitter–receiver distance, the variation of transceivers, the antenna orientation, and the environment specifics were found as important factors for creating accurate models, which would serve in tracking and localization applications.