Analyzing the effect of human body and metallic objects for indoor geolocation

Recently a special attention has been directed toward indoor localization and body area networks for medical purposes which, has its root in their broad applicability in that area. We understand that time-of-arrival (ToA) based techniques provide immense accuracy compare to received-signal-strength (RSS) and the angle-of-arrival (AoA) based techniques in situations that line-of-sight (LOS) exists. It is known that possible ranging errors introduce limitations on the accuracy of such systems for indoor environment as well as in and around human body which, are due to hindrance of the direct path and diffraction of the rays around the edges of metallic objects and around human bodies. Result of multiple scholarly literatures has proven modeling ranging estimates in the proximity of metallic objects and human bodies are rather complex leaving room for further investigations in those research areas. We leverage this paper to provide an overview on applicability of multiple computational and analytical electromagnetic (EM) methods to study modeling of ranging error and diffraction associated with TOA-based techniques around metallic object and human body.