IEEE 802.11 Distance Estimation Based on RTS/CTS Two-Frame Exchange Mechanism

The addition of positioning capabilities to widespread communications such as IEEE 802.11 compliant networks could open up interesting markets, in particular if a low-cost hardware has to be added to the existing one and standard RTS/CTS control frames exchange could be used for this purpose. In this paper various statistical estimators of the delay profile observed, derived from Round-Trip Time measurements, are analyzed and a linear regression of the statistical estimators is applied in order to improve the accuracy of distance estimation between a Mobile User and an Access Point. A precision in distance estimation with errors in the range of a meter is achieved.