Techniques to optimize geolocation for low-power devices

Abstract

Since the beginning of the internet, there is a growth in the number of connected devices. This growth became even bigger after all kind of IoT devices were connected to the internet. These devices must have a low power consumption. To achieve low power consumption, all features of the device must be power efficient. This also includes the geolocation technique. Adding a GPS module would increase the power consumption too much for some applications. This master's thesis researched how the location of a target device could be estimated completely based on the measurements of the packets received from the target device. Multiple wireless communication technologies were compared to find a low-power, long range and cost efficient wireless communication technology to develop geolocation techniques for. Researching and testing a wide variety of geolocation techniques resulted in the RSSI to distance conversion technique delivering the most accurate location estimates. The Weighted Centroid technique performed almost as well and didn't require a sent packet to be received by all base stations. The TDOA technique required a timing accuracy which our setup couldn't deliver. LoRa resulted as the most suitable communication technology and the Weighted Centroid technique is the most suitable technique for LoRa.