Automatic ranging and self-positioning is a verydesirable property in wireless acoustic sensor networks (WASNs)where nodes have at least one microphone and one loudspeaker.However, due to environmental noise, interference and multipatheffects, audio-based ranging is a challenging task. This paperpresents a fast ranging and positioning strategy that makes useof the correlation properties of pseudo-noise (PN) sequences forestimating simultaneously relative time-of-arrivals (TOAs) frommultiple acoustic nodes. To this end, a proper test signal designadapted to the acoustic node transducers is proposed. In addition,a novel self-interference reduction method and a peak matchingalgorithm are introduced, allowing for increased accuracy inindoor environments. Synchronization issues are removed byfollowing a BeepBeep strategy, providing range estimates thatare converted to absolute node positions by means of multidimensionalscaling (MDS). The proposed approach is evaluated bothwith simulated and real experiments under different acousticalconditions. The results using a real network of smartphones andlaptops confirm the validity of the proposed approach, reachingan average ranging accuracy below 1 centimeter.
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