Enhancing the Accuracy of Radio Tomographic Imaging Using Channel Diversity

Radio tomographic imaging (RTI) is an emerging device-free localization (DFL) technology enabling the localization of people and other objects without requiring them to carry any electronic device. Instead, the RF attenuation field of the deployment area of a wireless network is estimated using the changes in received signal strength (RSS) measured on links of the network. This paper presents the use of channel diversity to improve the localization accuracy of RTI. Two channel selection methods, based on channel packet reception rates (PRRs) and fade levels, are proposed. Experimental evaluations are performed in two different types of environments, and the results show that channel diversity improves localization accuracy by an order of magnitude. People can be located with average error as low as 0.10 m, the lowest DFL location error reported to date. We find that channel fade level is a more important statistic than PRR for RTI channel selection. Using channel diversity, this paper, for the first time, demonstrates that attenuation-based through-wall RTI is possible.