Impact of antenna pattern modeling errors on RSSI-based DOA estimation

Abstract

In this paper, we elaborate a reference antenna in terms of direction of arrival (DOA) estimation accuracy to verify its reliability under realistic propagation conditions. Estimation accuracy decreases for the reference antenna due to environmental influences. Our main contribution is modeling such non-anechoic environment in the simulation by considering proximity to earth with surface roughness, antenna cover against climatic influences and height of the stacked-up system over earth in a real-world deployment. We developed a ring extension for the antenna, such environmental influences are minimized and the DOA estimation accuracy is improved again. The overall localization performance of a system with several DOA estimation sensor nodes for different antenna configurations is proven in a simulation environment. The results show an improvement of the localization accuracy for the optimized antenna.