An RSSI-based navigation algorithm for a mobile robot in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are commonly employed for environmental and wildlife monitoring. In these scenarios, mobile robots with specialized sensing, processing and actuation abilities may be employed to investigate relevant events in place. However, driving the robot to the event place is not a trivial task in the typical case where sensor nodes do not have positioning sensors such as GPS. In this work we propose a novel navigation algorithm for the mobile robot based solely on the Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI) of communication packets. The proposed algorithm builds on a probabilistic signal propagation model recovered from real signal decay data, unlike alternative solutions found in literature. Simulations show a superior performance in comparison to similar related work.