'Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)'
Doi
Abstract
Automatic ranging and self-positioning is a very
desirable property in wireless acoustic sensor networks (WASNs)
where nodes have at least one microphone and one loudspeaker.
However, due to environmental noise, interference and multipath
effects, audio-based ranging is a challenging task. This paper
presents a fast ranging and positioning strategy that makes use
of the correlation properties of pseudo-noise (PN) sequences for
estimating simultaneously relative time-of-arrivals (TOAs) from
multiple acoustic nodes. To this end, a proper test signal design
adapted to the acoustic node transducers is proposed. In addition,
a novel self-interference reduction method and a peak matching
algorithm are introduced, allowing for increased accuracy in
indoor environments. Synchronization issues are removed by
following a BeepBeep strategy, providing range estimates that
are converted to absolute node positions by means of multidimensional
scaling (MDS). The proposed approach is evaluated both
with simulated and real experiments under different acoustical
conditions. The results using a real network of smartphones and
laptops confirm the validity of the proposed approach, reaching
an average ranging accuracy below 1 centimeter.This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness under Grant TIN2015-70202-P, TEC2012-37945-C02-02 and FEDER funds