Title: A novel radio source search algorithm using force field vectors and received signal strengths

Authors: Xiaochen Zhang; Yi Sun; Jizhong Xiao

Addresses: Department of Electrical Engineering, The City College of The City University of New York, New York, NY 10031, USA ' Department of Electrical Engineering, The City College of The City University of New York, New York, NY 10031, USA ' Department of Electrical Engineering, The City College of The City University of New York, New York, NY 10031, USA

Abstract: The indoor radio source search using received signal strength (RSS) is difficult due to the multipath effects. Robots driven by the RSS gradient-based searching methods are always stuck by local basins which are the areas around local maxima. In this paper, we propose a force field searching (FFS) algorithm which is cost efficient in environments with RSS local basins. The FFS algorithm fuses the geometry layout information with RSS. Virtual attraction forces weighted by RSS gradients are modelled to guide the robot to the radio source. Furthermore, the travel costs of FFS and the gradient ascent with correlated random walks (GACRW) algorithm are derived as functions of the searching space size, the local basin size and the local basin number in gradient fields. The analytical expressions are confirmed by simulations. It is shown that FFS is much faster than other algorithms in simulations driven by real data.

Keywords: force field search; FFS; gradient method; mobile robots; radio source search; received signal strength; RSS gradients; force field vectors; geometry layout; simulation; robot guidance.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMA.2013.052612

International Journal of Mechatronics and Automation, 2013 Vol.3 No.1, pp.25 - 35

Received: 01 Apr 2012
Accepted: 30 May 2012
Published online: 30 Apr 2014 *

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