Method and apparatus for estimating the location of a signal transmitter

摘要

In accordance with the principles of the present invention, a beaconing device transmits a radio signal that can be detected by a plurality of wireless receivers positioned at various known locations. The receivers form nodes of a wireless network that further includes a control node with which the receivers can communicate. Each receiver that receives the signal from the beaconing device records the signal strength at which it receives the signal from the beaconing device and sends that information to the control node. The control node processes the signal strength information received from all of the receivers and uses it to estimate the location of the beaconing device. Particularly, the controller solves an optimization problem for the coordinates of the beaconing device by determining the set of coordinates for the beaconing device that minimizes the squared error over all of the receivers that receive the signal from the beaconing device between (1) the Euclidian distance between the known coordinates of the receiving device and the estimated coordinates of the beaconing device and (2) the estimated distance between the beaconing device and the particular receiver based on signal strength at that receiver.