Towards Simulating Multipath Interference at Detectors A Tool for Validating Location Fingerprinting Methods

摘要

Signal attributes such as angle of arrival (AoA), time of arrival (ToA), signal amplitude, and phase can be used by a set of receivers (detectors) to perform location fingerprinting (LF), whereby the location of a wireless source is determined. In validating new approaches for location fingerprinting, it is useful to simulate these attributes for the subset of signals that intersect detectors. However, given indoor settings with a complex architecture, it is computationally expensive to simulate multipath propagation while preserving detailed signal information. Moreover, this cost can be unnecessary since determining whether an LF approach is promising may not require tracing all rays that impact the detector. Here, we report on our preliminary efforts to design and test a MATLAB-based simulation tool for wireless propagation that addresses this issue. Our approach builds upon well-known ray-tracing techniques, but innovates via an algorithm designed to obtain a sizable subset of rays that intersect a detector, along with the AoA, ToA, signal amplitude, and phase for each such ray. Finally, we employ our tool in conjunction with a neural network-based method for location fingerprinting, demonstrating the intended use case for our simulation tool.