Mobile location estimator with NLOS mitigation using Kalman filtering

Mobile location estimation has attracted much interest over the past few years. The most challenging issues, which render to reach the required accuracy for the time-based location system, are multipath and non line-of-sight (NLOS) problems. This paper suggests the simple but robust techniques using biased Kalman filter to smooth and mitigate the NLOS effect for TOA measurements. The processed TOAs are then used for DTOA formulation and provided for location estimation. The further tracking stage is shown not to improve the accuracy much but to be necessary to smooth the mobile trajectory. The better accuracy for mobile location is suggested for future work by using the geographical information through searching the match between the path loss measured at multiple BSs and that estimated by ray-tracing techniques.

[1]  T. Rantalainen,et al.  Mobile station emergency locating in GSM , 1996, 1996 IEEE International Conference on Personal Wireless Communications Proceedings and Exhibition. Future Access.

[2]  Jerry M. Mendel,et al.  Lessons in digital estimation theory , 1986 .

[3]  J. Holtzman,et al.  The non-line of sight problem in mobile location estimation , 1996, Proceedings of ICUPC - 5th International Conference on Universal Personal Communications.

[4]  Pi-Chun Chen,et al.  A non-line-of-sight error mitigation algorithm in location estimation , 1999, WCNC. 1999 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (Cat. No.99TH8466).

[5]  Rudolf Mathar,et al.  Location tracking of mobiles in cellular radio networks , 1999 .

[6]  D.G.M. Cruickshank,et al.  A robust location estimator architecture with biased Kalman filtering of TOA data for wireless systems , 2000, 2000 IEEE Sixth International Symposium on Spread Spectrum Techniques and Applications. ISSTA 2000. Proceedings (Cat. No.00TH8536).

[7]  K. C. Ho,et al.  A simple and efficient estimator for hyperbolic location , 1994, IEEE Trans. Signal Process..