This thesis deals with the use of spatial awareness methods within technologies designed for creation of short-range wireless sensor networks. The thesis analyzes several techniques that can be used to estimate position of objects within the sensor network. For a practical solution, a method based on measuring the time differences of the sent messages was chosen. A circuit implementation of a network node based on the DW1000 chip, which works on ultra-wideband transmission technology, was implemented. A sensor network with the appropriate user application for its operation and display of localization results was also implemented.

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of a large number of sensor nodes, capable of on-board sensing and data processing, that are employed to observe some phenomenon of interest. With their desirable properties of flexible deployment, resistance to harsh environment and lower implementation cost, WSNs envisage a plethora of applications in diverse areas such as industrial process control, battle- field surveillance, health monitoring, and target localization and tracking. Much of the sensing and communication paradigm in WSNs involves ensuring power efficient transmission and finding scalable algorithms that can deliver the desired performance objectives while minimizing overall energy utilization. Since power is primarily consumed in radio transmissions delivering timing information, clock synchronization represents an indispensable requirement to boost network lifetime. This dissertation focuses on deriving efficient estimators and performance bounds for the clock parameters in a classical frequentist inference approach as well as in a Bayesian estimation framework. A unified approach to the maximum likelihood (ML) estimation of clock offset is presented for different network delay distributions. This constitutes an analytical alternative to prior works which rely on a graphical maximization of the likelihood function. In order to capture the imperfections in node oscillators, which may render a time-varying nature to the clock offset, a novel Bayesian approach to the clock offset estimation is proposed by using factor graphs. Message passing using the max-product algorithm yields an exact expression for the Bayesian inference problem. This extends the current literature to cases where the clock offset is not deterministic, but is in fact a random process. A natural extension of pairwise synchronization is to develop algorithms for the more challenging case of network-wide synchronization. Assuming exponentially distributed random delays, a network-wide clock synchronization algorithm is proposed using a factor graph representation of the network. Message passing using the max- product algorithm is adopted to derive the update rules for the proposed iterative procedure. A closed form solution is obtained for each node's belief about its clock offset at each iteration. Identifying the close connections between the problems of node localization and clock synchronization, we also address in this dissertation the problem of joint estimation of an unknown node's location and clock parameters by incorporating the effect of imperfections in node oscillators. In order to alleviate the computational complexity associated with the optimal maximum a-posteriori estimator, two iterative approaches are proposed as simpler alternatives. The first approach utilizes an Expectation-Maximization (EM) based algorithm which iteratively estimates the clock parameters and the location of the unknown node. The EM algorithm is further simplified by a non-linear processing of the data to obtain a closed form solution of the location estimation problem using the least squares (LS) approach. The performance of the estimation algorithms is benchmarked by deriving the Hybrid Cramer-Rao lower bound (HCRB) on the mean square error (MSE) of the estimators. We also derive theoretical lower bounds on the MSE of an estimator in a classical frequentist inference approach as well as in a Bayesian estimation framework when the likelihood function is an arbitrary member of the exponential family. The lower bounds not only serve to compare various estimators in our work, but can also be useful in their own right in parameter estimation theory.

This thesis proposes an integrated artificial neural network based approach to classify the position of a wireless device in an indoor protected area. Our experiments are conducted in two different types of interference affected indoor locations. We found that the environment greatly influences the received signal strength. We realized the need of incorporating a complexity measure of the Wi-Fi signal as additional information in our localization algorithm. The inputs to the integrated artificial neural network were comprised of an integer dimension representation and a fractional dimension representation of the Wi-Fi signal. The integer dimension representation consisted of the raw signal strength, whereas the fractional dimension consisted of a variance fractal dimension of the Wi-Fi signal. The results show that the proposed approach performed 8.7% better classification than the “one dimensional input” ANN approach, achieving an 86% correct classification rate. The conventional Trilateration method achieved only a 47.97% correct classification rate.

Τα τελευταια χρόνια ειμαστε μαρτυρες ενός εντυπωσιακού παραδόξου στο χώρο της τεχνολογίας. Ενώ όλη η ανθρωπότητα αναζητά το κάτι παραπάνω σε υπολογιστική ισχύ, σε χώρο αποθήκευσης και σε ταχύτητα, μικρές αυτόνομες συσκευές έρχονται να κατακτήσουν όλο και περισσότερους τομείς της καθημερινότητάς μας. Μονάδες με την ικανότητα της επεξεργασίας και της αποθήκευσης δεδομένων, της αίσθησης του περιβάλλοντος αλλά και της επικοινωνίας μεταξύ τους, ενσωματώνονται σχεδόν σε όλους τους τομείς δραστηριοποίησης του ανθρώπου. Ο τρόπος αυτό-οργάνωσης αυτών των κόμβων - μονάδων στα πλαίσια μεγάλων ασύρματων δικτύων αισθητήρων, και η συλλογή δεδομένων από μια ευρεία περιοχή, τους δίνει τη δυνατότητα λήψης αποφάσεων, πολλές φορές κρίσιμων, ανάλογα με τις επικρατούμενες συνθήκες. Τα παραπάνω χαρακτηριστικά των δομικών στοιχείων των ασυρμάτων δικτύων αισθητήρων, σε συνδυασμό με τις υπηρεσίες της υψηλής και καθιερωμένης τεχνολογίας του συστήματος GPS (Global Positioning System) μπορούν να δημιουργήσουν έναν εκρηκτικό συνδυασμό και ερευνητικές ιδέες για ανάπτυξη αστικών εφαρμογών αυτοματισμού, στο πλαίσιο των λεγόμενων «έξυπνων πόλεων». Μέσα σε ένα απέραντο δίκτυο ασυρμάτων αισθητήρων, αποτελούμενο από χιλιάδες οντότητες, η ικανότητα του κάθε κόμβου να εντοπίζει την θέση του και να την μοιράζεται με τους υπόλοιπους, κερδίζει ολοένα και περισσότερο έδαφος ειδικά σε θέματα δρομολόγησης. Η χρήση της τεχνολογίας GPS από έναν κόμβο, αντικείμενο που μελετάμε στη παρούσα εργασία, μπορεί να οδηγήσει από την επιτυχή εφαρμογή του Geographical Routing σε ένα WSN, μέχρι την υλοποίηση απαιτητικών εφαρμογών για αντιγραφή κίνησης αλλά και δημιουργίας «έξυπνων αυτοκινητόδρομων» μέσα στους οποίους θα γίνεται αυτόματη πλοήγηση των κινητών υπό την επίβλεψη ενός μεγάλου WSN με κόμβους που συνεργάζονται με το σύστημα δορυφορικού εντοπισμού θέσης αλλά και μεταξύ τους. Όπως γίνεται άμεσα αντιληπτό, η παρούσα εργασία, που πραγματεύεται την σωστή συνεργασία και επικοινωνία ενός δικτύου ασυρμάτων αισθητήρων με την τεχνολογία GPS για την ιχνηλάτηση της πορείας ενός κινητού, μπορεί να δώσει μελλοντική τροφή για ενασχόληση σε πολλαπλά ερευνητικά επίπεδα. Η εργασία μας χωρίστηκε σε τρείς θεματικές ενότητες. Η πρώτη αφορά τον τομέα του WSN και του προγραμματισμού των κόμβων, για επικοινωνία με τους δορυφόρους, με τον υπολογιστή αλλά και μεταξύ τους, με τις απαραίτητες λειτουργικές εφαρμογές που κληθήκαμε να υλοποιήσουμε. Η δεύτερη αναφέρεται στην εργασία μας από την πλευρά του υπολογιστή, που λειτουργεί σαν συλλέκτης των δεδομένων του δικτύου, και τη σύνδεση του συστήματός μας με την πρότυπη εφαρμογή Google EarthTM για απεικόνιση σε πραγματικό χρόνο της τροχιάς που ακολουθεί ένα κινητό. Η τρίτη ενότητα περιλαμβάνει εκτέλεση πειραμάτων χρήσης του συστήματος που σχεδιάσαμε και παράθεση οπτικοποιημένων αποτελεσμάτων, για την εύκολη εξαγωγή χρήσιμων συμπερασμάτων όσον αφορά στη λειτουργικότητά του. / The last few years we witness a striking paradox in the field of technology. While all humanity is seeking for more computing power, more storage capabilities and more proccessing speed, small autonomous devices have appeared to occupy more and more areas of our lives in the daily routine. Units with the capabilities of data proccessing, data storage, enviromental sensing and communication with each other, are incorporated in almost all areas of human activity. The way in which these nodes are self-organized into large Wireless Sensor Networks and their ability to collect data from a wide area, enables them in taking decisions, critical ones sometimes, according to the prevailing conditions. The above characteristics of the components of wireless sensor networks, combined with the services of the established and standard technology of the GPS (Global Positioning System) can create ideas for research and development of urban applications of automation in the so-called “smart cities”. In a vast network of wireless sensors, consisting of thousands of entities, the ability of each node to detect its position and share it with others, is gaining more and more ground especially in routing topics. The use of GPS technology from a node, which is one of the subjects we study in this thesis, could lead from the successful implementation of the Geographical Routing, to the implementation of more demanding applications for motion replication but also to creating “smart highways” through which mobiles will execute an automatic navigation, supervised by a large WSN consisting of nodes cooperating with the satellite positioning system and with each other. As is readily apparent, the present thesis which is dealing with the good cooperation and communication of a wireless sensor network with the GPS technology in order to trace the path of a mobile, can provide room for future involvement in multiple levels of research. Our work was divided into three thematic sections. The first concerns the field of WSN and node programming so that they can be able to communicate with satellites, with the computer and with each other, by installing them with the necessary functional applications that we had to implement. The second section refers to our work on the computer side, which acts as a network data collector, and the link of our system with the standard Google EarthTM application to display the path of a mobile in real – time. The third section includes conducting experiments using the system we designed. The results are visualised and listed for an easy extraction of usefull conclusions regarding the functionality of our system.