Best Practice in RSS Measurements and Ranging

The term “ranging” is often used to indicate the operations that make it possible to estimate the distance between two nodes by processing some signals generated and/or received by the nodes. In wireless systems, a very popular ranging method makes use of the radio signal strength (RSS), which is a measure of the received radio signal power. However, RSS-based ranging is considered very inaccurate, particularly in indoor environments, mainly because of the randomness of the received signal power. In this tutorial paper, we provide an in-depth analysis of the main factors that affect the variability of the received signal power and the accuracy of the RSS measurements. Starting from a survey of the most common and widely accepted models for the radio signal propagation and the RSS-based ranging, we then focus our attention on some technological and procedural pitfalls that are often overlooked, but may significantly affect the accuracy of the RSS-based ranging, and we suggest possible techniques to alleviate such problems. The theoretical argumentation is backed up by a set of empirical results in different scenarios. We conclude this paper by providing some best-practice recommendations for proper RSS-based ranging estimation in wireless networks and discussing new approaches and open research challenges.