Log-distance path loss model-based relative distance estimation method

Beacon-based distance measurement approaches are very valuable to estimate users’ locations in indoor active media environments given that global positioning system (GPS) cannot be utilized in indoor environments. Traditional approach revises measured beacon distances to improve the accuracy of the measured beacon distances, which assumes that received-signal strength indicator (RSSI) is increased in the proportional to the measured beacon distance. However, RSSI is not increased linearly. Therefore, the errors of the revised distances are invoked. This paper proposes a log-distance path loss model-based relative distance estimation method. By applying a log-distance path loss model, the errors of revised distances can be reduced. In the experiments, the proposed method was compared to the traditional method, which shows the improved result that the accumulated error of the proposed method is decreased to 80% comparing to that of the traditional method.