RSS-based localization with different antenna orientations

This paper analyzes the influence of the antenna orientation on the performance of Received Signal Strength (RSS) based localization algorithms. Existing RSS-based localization algorithms provide reliable results in environments with static sources of error. This paper analyzes the performance of three RSS-based algorithms in an environment with the antenna orientation as a dynamic source of error. We first experimentally verify that the antenna orientation has a large influence on the received signal strength by performing an extensive amount of measurements. As expected, these measurements show that the signal strength may vary more than a factor five under different antenna orientations. This paper shows that antenna orientations may decrease the performance of optimally calibrated RSS-based localization algorithms by as much as 32%, from 1.8 to 2.65 meter. In addition, it shows that improper calibration of the antenna orientation may decrease the accuracy by 64%, from 1.9 to 3.1 meter.