UAM-RDE: an uncertainty analysis method for RSSI-based distance estimation in wireless sensor networks

Distance estimation between sensor nodes is crucial to localization and object tracking in a wireless sensor network. The received signal strength indicator is widely used for wireless distance estimation, because of its advantages, including availability, low cost, flexibility, and so on. As is well known, RSSI measurement values are extremely susceptible to the surroundings, resulting in uncertain distance estimations. Without confidential information, the distance estimation results could not provide valuable priori information for follow-up processing methods and applications, such as localization, navigation, and guidance. In this paper, we propose a new uncertainty analysis method for RSSI-based distance estimation (UAM-RDE) to study the uncertainty propagation in RSSI-based distance estimations. In UAM-RDE, we explore the uncertainty propagation mechanism from the input to the output of the RSSI-based distance estimation, including uncertainty factor analysis, sensitivity analysis, propagation, and synthesis of uncertainty. The simulations and experimental results validate and demonstrate the feasibility of UAM-RDE.