On the accuracy of an indoor location-sensing technique suitable for impulse radio networks

An impulse radio indoor mapping and positioning technique has been proposed. This technique enables impulse radios to use the times of arrival (TOAs) of dominant echoes from the surrounding environment to generate a map showing the major features of the environment and pinpoint themselves on this map. This technique can be used to aid indoor applications designed for location-based services or for wireless sensor networks used in disaster zones. 2D Mapping and positioning algorithms have been developed for the proposed technique. As the timer in an impulse radio receiver cannot be exact, errors are introduced into the measured TOAs of dominant echoes. This paper uses the reconstructions of simple indoor environments, which are common substructures of indoor geometries, to show the effects of time measurement errors in reconstructed scenarios. An approach to improve the accuracy is addressed and this approach can be applied to the reconstructions of more complex scenarios. © 2007 IEEE.