Adaptive GPS duty cycling and radio ranging for energy-efficient localization

Abstract

This paper addresses the tradeoff between energy consumption
and localization performance in a mobile sensor
network application. The focus is on augmenting GPS location
with more energy-efficient location sensors to bound position estimate uncertainty in order to prolong node lifetime.
We use empirical GPS and radio contact data from a largescale animal tracking deployment to model node mobility, GPS and radio performance. These models are used to explore duty cycling strategies for maintaining position uncertainty within specified bounds. We then explore the benefits of using short-range radio contact logging alongside GPS as an energy-inexpensive means of lowering uncertainty while the GPS is off, and we propose a versatile contact logging strategy that relies on RSSI ranging and GPS lock back-offs for reducing the node energy consumption relative to GPS duty cycling. Results show that our strategy can cut the node energy consumption by half while meeting application specific positioning criteria.