A Method for Estimating Angular Separation in Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks

Resource-constrained mobile sensors require periodic position measurements for navigation around the sensing region. Such information is often obtained using GPS or onboard sensors such as optical encoders. However, GPS is not reliable in all environments, and odometry accrues error over time. Although several localization techniques exist for wireless sensor networks, they are typically time consuming, resource intensive, and/or require expensive hardware, all of which are undesirable for lightweight mobile devices. In this paper, we describe a technique for determining spatial relationships that is suitable for resource-constrained mobile sensors. Angular separation between multiple pairs of stationary sensor nodes is derived using wheel encoder data in conjunction with the measured Doppler shift of an RF interference signal. Our experimental results demonstrate that using this technique, a robot is able to determine the angular separation between four pairs of sensors in a 45 × 35 m sensing region with an average error of 0.28 rad. in 0.68 s.

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