Localization of Omni-directional Mobile Device in Multipath Environments

This paper presents a comprehensive Non Line of Sight (NLOS) localization scheme in a multipath environment where the scatterers with smooth surfaces are aligned parallel or perpendicular to each other. It leverages on the estimation of Angle of Arrival (AOA) and Time of Arrival (TOA) of the omni-directional mobile device’s signal received at the reference devices. Unlike the conventional Line of Sight (LOS) localization schemes that rely on the various mitigation techniques to mitigate the multipaths that are mistaken as the LOS signal, our proposed two step localization scheme not only utilizes the LOS path but also any one bound scattering NLOS multipath arriving at the reference devices for localization. Channel experiment coupled with simulation results in a typical multipath environment has demonstrated that our proposed localization scheme outperforms the conventional localization schemes that are coupled with their own mitigation techniques. Robustness in performance of our proposed localization scheme towards different scatterers’ orientation where they are not aligned parallel or perpendicular to each other are also investigated.