Transmission Power Influence on WSN-Based Indoor Localization Efficiency

Performing a good-quality indoor localization of a mobile target is a challenging task, which can be affected by many factors such as radio wave behavior, the nature of the experimental environment, and available infrastructure. (1) Background: An indoor localization experiment using an Internet of Things (IoT) wireless sensor network (WSN) testbed is performed, in order to study the influence of transmission power level on the quality of received signals, and consequently, the estimated target positional coordinates. (2) Methods: A received signal strength indicator (RSSI) range-based localization system using a geometrical constrained weighted least squares (WLS) estimator multilateration technique is selected to validate the influence of the transmission power level on the performance of the localization algorithm. (3) Results: Fair localization quality was obtained at the highest transmission power level instead of the proposed transmission power level. (4) Conclusion: Additional factors are discussed to fully represent the required operational transmission power for a better localization quality, along with suggested improvements of the infrastructure configuration as a future work.