Short Range Frequency Scanning Estimation for Localisation in Cognitive Radio Environment

Kamaludin Mohamad Yusof

Faculty of Electrical Engineering Universiti Teknologi Malaysia Johor, Malaysia Email: kamalmy@fke.utm.my

John Woods and Steve Fitz

School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering University of Essex Essex, United Kingdom Email: woodjt,stephen@essex.ac.uk

AbstractRange estimation has become a crucial factor for localisation in wireless sensor networks (WSN). We present a highly novel method of multiple frequencies scanning to estimate the range based on the deep fade linearity function: when a frequency scan is performed the periodicity of the nulls is directly proportional to the distance. This observation makes possible a whole new approach to range estimation for short range and unobstructed environment. In addition the proposed technique can be supported by Cognitive Radio (CR) technologies. Index Termsshort range communication, range estimation, localisation, cognitive radio, frequency scanning

I. I NTRODUCTION The key challenge in acquiring highly accurate location estimates in wireless sensor nodes (SN) in WSN is to get an accurate range estimate between node pairs; since the rangebased localisation process requires range estimates between several node pairs as an input. Therefore the accuracy of the range estimation will determine the precision of the localisation result. Range-based approaches are more widely studied than the range free approaches, since they give a more accurate localisation. There are several techniques that have been proposed to estimate range. In [1] the techniques shown are based on: Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI), Time of Arrival (ToA), Time Difference of Arrival (TDoA) and Angle of Arrival (AoA). Radio Interferometric technique is explained in [2]. However, the techniques all suffer when multiple transmission paths exist. In reality, there is no received signal that is not affected by this factor. The success or failure in nding highly accurate range estimates depends on the environment and the approach deployed. In structure monitoring systems such as building or tunnel monitoring, deterministic methods along with pre-planning techniques are used to locate sensor nodes at certain places and ranges, reducing the complexity of the problem. In this technique the nodes transmit the data which is already included with the position and node identity. Once the receiver decodes the signal, it will know where the data is from and therefore localisation is not the problem. When deployed in a random distribution, the sensor nodes will be placed on the ground near to the sensing area but the location will not be known a priori. They will depend only on the information from the anchor node and the nodes surround-

ing them. Most applications such as surveillance and search and rescue that use these techniques, nd it more difcult to estimate the sensor nodes location than the deterministic approach. In random deployment, range estimation errors are the main problem in obtaining accurate location estimates. This is often due to the surrounding area, which will create multipath effects on the transmitted signals. The multipath causes the original and duplicated signals to travel with different path lengths, different phases and different amplitudes, where the amplitudes degrade as the path length increases. The received signal then consists of a summation of all signals with different delays, phases and amplitudes. This leads to random uctuations of the received signal power and range estimation becomes difcult. Location estimation methods based on signal propagation models have received wide attention but they are not truly representative and account for much of the error. In order to infer the locations of the wireless signal sources, most assume the wireless signal path loss and the wireless channel obey a log-distance path loss model which is log-normal shadowing with zero mean Gaussian noise [1][3]. However [4] suggest that two-ray propagation is sufcient for short range. So far most of the range estimation techniques use a distance path loss model as a function to estimate the range but only use a single frequency. In our technique [5], range estimation based on frequency scanning is introduced, where the range can be estimated by comparing the periodicity of the deep fades with the linearity function of the deep fade with distance. Based on our simulations, the technique is shown to give highly accurate range estimates in the presence of a multipath environment. As a concept this technique promises very high accuracy, however, in reality the requirement of a large spectrum produces constraints on the implementation. Joseph Mitola [6] was the rst to introduce CR, which is a system that is aware of its surrounding environment. The system knows when to commence or stop transmission by using spectrum sensing. It has the capability to utilise an unused band without interfering with the other users. CR is able to perform spectrum sensing and can learn and adapt to the Radio Frequency (RF) environment. Given recent improvements in hardware design, software dened radio (SDR)

is a convenient way to implement CR. Antennas for CR have received considerable research effort [7] and they tend to t into two categories: wideband and tuning antennas. The wideband antenna has a frequency range from 400Hz to 7GHz and the tuning antenna can be tuned to the desired carrier frequency [7]. Recent developments of SDR allow a completely adaptable physical layer to be realised, where the communication features can be changed on the y. Based on the above, we propose a new technique for range estimation using multiple frequencies rather than a single frequency system suitable for a CR environment. The rest of this paper is organised as follows. A methodology of the short range frequency scanning technique is given in section II. Then in Section III we explain the proposed propagation model for WSNs. The frequency scanning range estimation technique is explained in Section IV. Finally, the conclusions are drawn in Section V. II. M ETHODOLOGY The increasing demand in WSN applications make the industrial, scientic and medical (ISM) spectrum over crowded. This will contribute interference to other applications that use the same frequency and produce errors for the SN in the range estimate. However studies show most of the allocated channels are underutilised most of the time; some are partially occupied while others are heavily used [6]. The growing research on CR makes it possible to use different frequencies at different times. We make assumption, that the nodes are able to nd the white spectrum or spectrum holes.

Fig. 2.

Spectrum detected by SNs in different locations

detected by the SNs at different locations, and the localisation spectrum transmitted by SN shown by red color. In the SRFS technique in the rst instance the SN will scan a wide spectrum range to identify the white spectrum. In CR three different spectrum sensing methods have been proposed to identify the white space; matched lter, energy detector and cyclostationary feature detection [8]. However in this paper we assume the nodes have capability to scan the white space. Once the white space has been detected, it will be recorded in the memory stack. At certain locations the SN will detect a different part of the spectrum. In the second stage, the SN uses that spectrum to transmit the localisation signal and the other nodes will sense that signal. In the third stage, the captured signal power from the localisation signal is used to perform an estimation of the distance based on the Multivariate Newton Raphson Method (MNRM). In the nal stage, the SN will choose the suitable frequency to transmit the sensing application data to other nodes. III. M ULTIPLE -R AY P ROPAGATION M ODEL The radio channel is an important factor to estimate the quality of the signal received. Different environments have different characteristics on the received signal. Therefore, a suitable propagation model should be used for estimating the signal power. In WSNs the range is short and most of the applications require SNs to be deployed on a at surface. It has different characteristics from the mobile propagation. And therefore we cannot use mobile propagation as a model for WSNs since the antennas height is different from the height of the mobile station. In this paper we focussed on the short range and unobstructed outdoor environment with low antenna height. As previously discussed, the most widely used model for signal propagation in wireless sensor networks is the lognormal shadowing model [1][3]. Where log-normal shadowing represents the average received power and on a logarithmic scale tends to be an exponential trendline using least squares

Fig. 1.

Topology for different wireless applications

Therefore, we propose the range estimation technique called Short Range Frequency Scanning (SRFS) based on frequency scanning by using white spaces (spectrum holes) in the spectrum to transmit the WSN signal. However, the sensor nodes should not create interference to the licensed user and should move to another frequency when the licensed user requires that frequency. Fig. 1 shows the topology of several wireless networks using different parts of the spectrum. Assuming four different application (AP) spectrums exist in a WSN, which are coloured with: Blue - AP 1, Yellow - AP 2, Green - AP 3, Purple - AP 4 and Red - AP WSN. Fig. 2 shows the spectrum

0 Two-ray propagation -20 Received Power (dBm) -40 -60 -80 -100 -120 0.1 Received Power (dBm) M R propagation

0 Two-ray propagation -20 -40 -60 -80 -100 -120 0.1 M R propagation

1 Distance, m

10

100

1 Distance, m

10

100

(a) = 3 Fig. 3.

(a)

(b) = 30

(b)

Received power for two-ray and MR propagation model for frequency 2400MHz

(log-distance attenuation). In reality, for short range and near to ground communication, the measurements done by [4] shows the propagation model follows a two-ray propagation, where the received power will randomly uctuate around the average. [4] shows that for a short range communication, the received power tends to uctuate until a certain distance is reached and agrees well with the two-ray ground reection model. The propagation model is useful in dening the relationship between RSSI values and the distance between transmitter and receiver. In this paper, we use a Multiple-Ray (MR) propagation model as shown by (1). Since both the LOS (Lineof-Sight) and ground reection paths can be calculated the MR propagation model can be modeled using a classical two-ray ground reection model by adding more paths.
M

i = 0 + i

; 0 << i f or i = 1, 2, 3, ..., M

(2)

where 0 is LOS delay and i is the time difference between ith path and the LOS paths. Small changes in the path delay can lead to large phase changes in the i-th multipath component. This causes rapid variation in the received signal strength and this phenomenon is called fading. The power delay prole (P DP ) modeled uses an exponential distribution and has a mean of = 1 . P DP () e (3)

Pr(,d) = Ka Klos + Kgr +

i=3

i i Gri eji dri

(1)

where Pr(,d) is received power at distance d and frequency 2 with wavelength , Ka = Pt 2 (4) , Klos = G1 /dlos , Kgr = gr G2 ejgr /dgr , i is the phase difference for the i-th path, i = 2 (dri dlos ) / is the amplitude attenuation, the maximum number of paths is M which includes the LOS path and ground reection path and is the path length for multipath signals with an exponential distribution (e ). This model is related to the classical two-ray ground reection model when only the exponential factor Ka , the direct path factor Klos and the ground reection factor Kgr are included in the equation. The reectors that contribute to the multipath are assumed static, and therefore the path lengths of the reection signals are constant; they have different values for different location reector locations. Theoretically the received power is inversely proportional to the distance. Therefore the ray, which travels the longest path, has the longest delay and lowest power compared to the ray with the smallest path length. This allows the assumption to be made that the path delay distribution is an exponential function. The exponential prole is a pragmatic solution where the average power decays exponentially as the path length increases. The delay for the i-th path

where is the arrival rate of the paths at the receiver. We make the assumption that the arrival rate of multipath signals for dense multipath is greater than light multipath (dense > light ). In dense multipath the location of the reection surface or object is near to the antenna, therefore the signals will be received at a high arrival rate. While in light multipath, the reection of the signal will occur at long distances making the path length much longer than dense multipath resulting in slow arrival rates. Fig. 3 show the effect of multipath in two different conditions with (dense = 3) and (light = 30). The path loss for the MR model in Fig. 3(a) shows agreement with a two-ray propagation model until the distance reaches 2.8 meters, after this it uctuates randomly. While in Fig. 3(b), the signal starts to uctuate at 11 meters. These results show that with a high arrival rate the beginning of fading occurs at shorter distances and longer for low arrival; this will bound the estimation ranges. In the simulation, both antennas are 1 meter in height and 10 paths have been used. In short range communication the deep fades effect is more obvious as shown in [5]. This is due to the existance of two dominant paths, the LOS path (dlos ) and ground reection path (dgr ). The deep fades exist in the ripple or falloff region, before the breakpoint which is the position, where the transition of falloff started. After this point no deep fade exist. Plotting the graph of received power versus frequencies for distance 10 meters shows the deep fades occur at different frequencies with certain periodicity as shown in Fig. 4. For

-30 -40 Received Power, dBm -50 -60 -70 -80 -90 -100 0 Tw o-ray propagation MR propagation 1000 2000 3000 Frequency, MHz 4000 5000 Received Power, dBm

-30 -40 -50 -60 -70 -80 -90 -100 0 Tw o-ray propagation MR propagation 1000 2000 3000 Frequency, MHz 4000 5000

(a) = 3 Fig. 4.

(b) = 30

Received power for two-ray and MR propagation model for distance = 10m

different multipath conditions, = 3 and = 30 the deep fades still can be detected. IV. R ANGE E STIMATION T ECHNIQUE In short range and unobstructed environment with low antenna heigth, the LOS path (dlos ) and ground reection path (dgr ) become more dominant in multipath components (MPCs) and the null can be observed clearly. Therefore in our ranging technique, the fades or nulls have been used to estimate the range. In theoretical the technique examines the periodicities of the faded signal and when a frequency scan is performed, the periodicity of the received signal strength is proportional to the distance. It has been shown in [5] that by comparing the periodic value to a linear periodic function, the distance between sensor node and anchor node can be estimated. The method assumes a wireless sensor node has the capability to scan across a large frequency band. The deep fade received power, Pdf can be calculated by using (4). Pdf (, d)(dB) = Pr (, d)(dB) Ka(dB) (4)

fn = cn

where c = 3 108 ms1 , the speed of the light, dlos is the direct path, dgr is ground reection path and n is the number of the null. Therefore, the periodicity of the null at certain distances can be calculated by using P (d) = fn (d) fn1 (d) ; n = 1, 2, 3, ..., N (6)

1 dgr dlos

(5)

Fig. 6 shows a linear graph of periodicity of nulls versus distance for different heights of antenna. The slope of the periodicity is proportional to the height of the antenna. When the height of the antennas is increased the slope is increased.
5000 Deep Fade Periodicity, MHz 4000

3000

2000 Antenna Height 0.8 m 1000 Antenna Height 1 m Antenna Height 1.2 m 0 5 10 15 20 25 Distance, m 30 35 40

where Pdf (, d)dB is the deep fade power or the received power Pr (, d)dB in dB.
0 Deep Fade Received Power, dBm

-20

Fig. 6.

Deep fade periodicity for different antenna heights

-40

P(d=10m)

-60 Tw o-ray propagation MR propagation -80 0 1000 2000 3000 Frequency, MHz 4000 5000

In real scenario the licensed and unlicensed users make our technique is difcult to be implemented due to the availability of the large spectrum band. However, CR has promising spectrum sharing and dynamic spectrum access. Therefore, we assume the SNs can dynamically reuse available spectrum to transmit and scan localisation signal. A. Spectrum Scanning At this stage sensor nodes will scan the entire spectrum to nd the spectrum holes. The scanning process can be performed in two stages: spectrum sensing and range scanning. In the spectrum sensing stage a sensor node will sense the available frequency band or spectrum holes by estimating the power spectral density.

Fig. 5.

Deep fade received power

Fig. 5 shows the deep fade received power for an antenna height of 1 meter and 10 meters distance for (M = 10, i = 0.5 and = 5). The deep fade occurs at different frequencies and has the same period. The nulls, which occur at a given frequency fn with a certain periodicity Pd can be dened as

In our technique we assume the SN has the capability to sense the spectrum holes. Once the SN detect the spectrum holes, it will update the white space memory stack and broadcast it to every SNs in the transmission range using default frequency, therefore the SN and other nodes aware what the frequency can be used to communicate. In the range scanning process the SN will transmit a localisation signal to the other nodes and at the same time the other nodes will scan the signal using all white space information in the stack. In this paper we assume the SNs have capability to synchronise with the other nodes when transmitting localisation signal since we only do range estimation between two nodes. The l frequencies are scanned rotationally by using a switched RF transmitter in spiralbidirectional scanning as proposed by [9]. fk = fo kf ; k = 0, 1, 2, 3, ..., K (7)

path (dgr ). In general to estimate m unknown values, m equations are required. In order to use MNRM, we must rst determine the functional form shown in (8). fi (x) = Pdf (tworay) (i ) Pdf (multipleray) (i ) where x is (dlos , dgr ). The MNRM algorithm can be summarised as Algorithm 1 M N RM (j , j+1 , Pdf (j ) , Pdf (j+1 )) 1: procedure E STIMATE (dlos , dgr ) 2: let = (1 , 2 , 3 , . . . , m ) 3: let Pdf = (Pdf 1 , Pdf 2 , Pdf 3 , . . . , Pdf m ) 4: for s 1, m 1 do 5: set initial value for xi 6: for j 1, number of iteration do 7: compute Jacobian Matrix Jf i (x) 8: solve the system matrix Jf i (x) xi = fi (x) 9: solve xx+1 = xi + xi 10: end for 11: end for 12: end procedure Once the values of dlos and dgr have been estimated, we use both values for the periodicity estimation by using (5) and (6). Finally we compare the estimated deep fade period value to the linear function of deep fade to estimate the distance. By using this technique as few as two frequencies are all that is required. Increasing the number of frequencies will increase the accuracy of the estimation.
0 Deep Fade Received Power, dBm

(8)

The scanned frequencies consist of l = 2K + 1 narrowband components where fo is the center frequency and f is the frequency sweep. The total localisation signal frequencies transmitted are L l frequencies are transmitted rotationally as shown in Fig. 7. The total time required to performance the range estimation become longer when more frequencies (white spectrum) are used. At this stage the received power for every transmitted localisation signals have been recorded in the memory.

-20

Fig. 7.

Spiral-bidirectional frequency scanning

-40

B. Multivariate Newton Raphson Method In the frequency scanning range estimation technique the distance can be estimate by comparing the null periodicity with deep fade linearity function. As shown in (6) we can calculate the periodicity of the null, since the heights of the antennas are known. In reality the detection of the deep fade depends on the size of the scanning spectrum and the availbility of the white space. The occurrence of the deep fades at the frequencies same with the skipped frequencies due to occupancy by other users, make the null is unable to be detected. It makes the calculation of the deep fade period more than expected. Therefore the estimation of the deep fade period should not directly depend on the detection of the deep fade. The Multivariate Newton Raphson Method (MNRM) technique has been proposed. MNRM is used to solve a nonlinear equation as shown in (4) to estimate the values of two parameters: the direct path (dlos ) and the ground reection

-60 Tw o-ray propagation MR propagation -80 0 1000 2000 3000 Frequency, MHz 4000 5000

Fig. 8. Deep fade frequency scanning for multiple frequencies (Antenna Height Ht , Hr = 1m, d = 10m, M = 10 and = 30)

The results of the proposed localisation method based on frequency scanning are shown in Fig. 8 and Fig. 9. In the simulation the white space frequencies have been chosen randomly by assuming that the SN has the capability to detect the white space. Fig. 8 shows the range scanning deep fade received power of MR propagation for multiple frequencies. The values of the deep fade received power, Pdf for 100 samples for every frequency is shown in the graph. The Pdf of two-ray propagation has been used to show that the Pdf follow its trend, however with different mean values. A mean with a standard deviation

5000 4000

3000

2000

1000

True distance Estimate distance

10

15 20 Distance, m

25

30

35

Fig. 9. Range estimation for different distances (Antenna Height Ht , Hr = 1m, M = 10 and = 30)

of less than 3dBm has been used as the input of the MNRM algorithm. Fig. 9 shows that by using the proposed technique, the range can be accurately estimated.
0.015 =5 =30 0.01 MSE

[4] T. Stoyanova, F. Kerasiotis, A. Prayati, and G. Papadopoulos, A practical rf propagation model for wireless network sensors, in Proc. of Third International Conference on Sensor Technologies and Applications, (Sensorcomm 2009), Athens, Greece, June 2009, pp. 194 199. [5] K. M. Yusof, J. Woods, and S. Fitz, Frequency scanning using software dened radio for localised range estimation, in Proc. of Third International Conference on Sensor Technologies and Applications, (Sensorcomm 2009), Athens, Greece, June 2009, pp. 181186. [6] I. Mitola, J. and J. Maguire, G.Q., Cognitive radio: making software radios more personal, Personal Communications, IEEE, vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 13 18, August 1999. [7] P. S. Hall, P. Gardner, J. Kelly, E. Ebrahimi, M. R. Hamid, and F. Ghanem, Antenna challenges in cognitive radio, International Sysmposium on Antennas and Propagation, October 2008. [8] T. Yucek and H. Arslan, A survey of spectrum sensing algorithms for cognitive radio applications, Communications Surveys Tutorials, IEEE, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 116 130, 2009. [9] S. Subramani, S. Armour, D. Kaleshi, and Z. Fan, Spectrum scanning and reserve channel methods for link maintenance in cognitive radio systems, in Proc. of IEEE 67th Vehicular Technology Conference, (VTC Spring 2008), Marina Bay, Singapore, May 2008, pp. 1944 1948.

Deep Fade Periodicity, MHz

0.005

3 4 5 6 Number of Frequencies

Fig. 10. MSE for different number of frequencies (Antenna Height Ht , Hr = 1m, d = 10m, M = 10 and = 30)

Fig. 10 shows the mean squared error (MSE) for two cases, which are = 5 (dense) and = 30 (light). The accuracy is dependent on the multipath and the number of frequencies used for transmitting localization signal. Increasing the number of frequencies will increase the accuracy. V. C ONCLUSION In this paper we propose a short range estimation technique based on frequency scanning which actually exploits multipath propagation for short range unobstructed environments. The technique examines the periodicities of the faded signal by using the Multivariate Newton Raphson Method. It has been shown that by comparing the periodic value to a linear periodic function, the distance between sensor node and anchor node can be estimated. Increasing the number of frequencies will increase the accuracy and the range estimation time. R EFERENCES
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