TDoA and RSS based Extended Kalman Filter for
Indoor Person Localization
Julian Lategahn, Marcel Müller, Christof Röhrig
University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Dortmund, Emil-Figge-Str. 42, 44227 Dortmund, Germany
julian.lategahn@fh-dortmund.de
Abstract—Pedestrian localization systems require the knowl-
edge of a users position for manifold applications in indoor
and outdoor environments. For this purpose severel methods
can be used, such as a Global Navigation Satellite System
(GNSS) or Inertial Navigation Systems (INS). Since GNSS are
not available in indoor environments or street canyons, in this
paper a 802.15.4a network is used to estimate the pedestrian’s
position. The used network platform provides the Time Difference
of Arrival (TDoA) as well as the Received Signal Strength (RSS).
To fuse both measurement types a novel method is implemented
which is based on the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF). Due to the
low accuracy of RSS it is ignored if the TDoA system performs
well. But if the TDoA measurements are affected by multipath
propagation or other effects the RSS values are used to identify
those situations and to correct the estimated position of the user.
To evaluate the algorithm experimental results in two different
environments are presented.
Index Terms—Person Localization; Indoor; RSS; TDoA; Ex-
tended Kalman Filter
I. I NTRODUCTION
Localization of human operators is the basis of any
Location-Based Service (LBS). LBS provide information or
services with respect to the current position. There are many
existing applications such as restaurant finders or museum
guides, which provide information about an exhibit or lead
the way to a certain point of interest. Of course there is a
need of an accurate localization in other domains, for example
in logistics [1], safety applications or in the field of Ambient
Assisted Living (AAL).
Outside of buildings Global Navigation Satellite Systems
(GNSS), such as the Global Positioning System (GPS) or
the European equivalent Galileo, are well suited to solve the
positioning problem. There are many applications like car
navigation systems, training support for runners and LBS
on smartphones as well. In those applications GNSS, due
to the accuracy of many meters, are often combined with
other localization systems. For example an Inertial Navigation
Systems (INS) can be used, which is measuring the users
steps and his orientation, or wheel encoders in cars [2]. But
inertial techniques need an initial position and cannot provide
a long term stability of the position. If the user is in an
indoor environment or a deep street canyon where GNSS
information is not availible over a long time period, the system
supplies only incorrect or no results. In such environments
other techniques are needed to compute the users position. In
this paper we propose a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) for
the localization. It consists of stationary anchor nodes with
978-1-4673-6187-3/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE
prior known positions and mobile devices, which are attached
at the users body [3].
In order to estimate a users position in a WSN there are
several techniques to accomplish this goal. An easy way to
compute the position is to use the Received Signal Strength
(RSS). Most radio receivers in a wireless system have the
ability to measure the signal strength. This signal strength can
be translated to a distance by using a path loss model, as we
do in this paper. Another method is the use of a radio map.
Here an offline phase is performed to take RSS measurements
at specified points with known positions and stored in a map.
In the online phase the current measured RSS values of the
user are compared to the saved ones in the map. Due to this
relation a user can be localized [4].
Angle of Arrival (AoA) is a different method, which localize
users by measuring the direction of the incoming signal.
For this purpose special antenna arrays are needed. If some
measurements to different anchors are available the current
position can be computed using triangulation.
Besides to the already introduced techniques, there are
a couple of methods based on the signals Time of Flight
(ToF). One of them is to measure the Time of Arrival (ToA).
While using this method the clocks of all participants must be
precisely synchronized. Due to the knowledge of the signals
velocity the position can be computed by trilateration. If the
synchronization between the anchors and the mobile devices is
not possible, the Roundtrip Time of Flight (RToF) can be used
instead. Here the system measures the signals flight duration
from the mobile device to the anchor and the other way round.
This eliminates the clock error but increases the duration
per distance measurement. Another method is to measure the
Time Difference of Arrival (TDoA). In this approach only the
anchors have to be synchronized. Basically there are a few
methods to derive TDoA measurements. In this Paper the so
called Uplink-TDoA is used. Here the tag broadcasts a signal,
which is processed on the anchor nodes. Using multilateration
the resulting time differences can be translated to a position.
A more detailed overview of the presented methods and
their applications is given in [5].
In this paper a combination of Uplink-TDoA and a RSS
path loss model is used to estimate a person’s position. To deal
with the noisy measurements of both techniques an Extended
Kalman Filter (EKF) is employed. We used the nanoPAL
RTLS Toolbox provided by Nanotron Technologies in our
experiments [6]. The commercial available system confirms
 Initial Position
Prediction Phase
Update Phase TDoA
RSS
Fig. 1. Extended Kalman Filter
the IEEE 802.15.4a standard and works in the 2.4 GHz ISM
band. IEEE 802.15.4a defines Chirp Spread Spectrum (CSS),
which is used by the toolbox, and Ultra Wide Band (UWB) for
measuring distances. One drawback of the nanoPAL system in
context to the paper is the relatively low resolution of the RSS
measurements, which is at 2 dBm.
II. R ELATED W ORK
Due to the increasing demand for indoor positioning sys-
tems, wireless localization is an important research field in the
past years. Many published papers deal with different kinds
of localization techniques in GNSS and WSN. In [4] a RSS
fingerprinting algorithm is presented, which uses a particle
filter to estimate the position from a radio map. Because of
the limited accuracy of RSS based methods it is useful to
make combinations with other techniques. So [7] and [8] use
algorithms to fuse ToA respectively TDoA measurements with
the signal strength. Disadvantage of the algorithm used in [8]
is the non-observance of multipath propagations. Other papers
deal with the combination of wireless localization and INS.
In [9] a system is presented, which fuses RSS measurements
with a step detection, step length estimation and an orientation
estimation. This extension increases the accuracy of the system
many times over. Similar observations were made in [10]
where the authors used a combined UWB/INS System.
Due to the popularity of smartphones, which are mostly well
equipped with GPS, WiFi and inertial sensors, there are many
researchers working on such locating systems as presented in
[11].
In many applications it is useful to combine indoor with
outdoor localization techniques as the authors did in [12].
Here GPS and RFID is used to achieve a seamless transition
between both technologies.
III. E XTENDED K ALMAN F ILTER
The Kalman Filter, which was first introduced in [13],
is a recursive state estimator of a linear dynamic system.
The filter handles incomplete and noisy measurement-data by
minimizing the mean squared error. If the state transition or
the measurement model is modeled by non-linear equations,
the Extended Kalman Filter can be used instead [14]. The EKF
linearizes the non-linear system by using a first order Taylor
expansion. The non-linear function f translates the state vector
x at time step k−1 to the next time step k, while the functionh
relates the current state to the measurement zk :
xk = f (xk−1 , uk ) + ωk , (1)
zk = h(xk ) + νk . (2)
The random variables ωk and νk represent the noise of the
state transition and the measurement. They are assumed to
be white, mutually independent and normally distributed with
covariances Qk and Rk respectively. The recursive estimation
process is governed by a prediction - update cycle as shown
in figure 1.
The initial position is computed by a multilateration least
squares algorithm which is presented in [15]. The state tran-
sition function from 1 is assumed to be linear, so it becomes
as follows:
   
xk xk−1
= + ωk. (3)
yk yk−1
In this novel approach the update phase is splitted into two
separate parts. The first one, which is explained more detailed
in subsection III-A, includes the TDoA measurements. Due to
the higher accuracy compared to the RSS measurements, the
model is used as the primary source of location information.
In a second step the signal strength is used as a corrector
for the TDoA model. If the first step computes an evidently
inaccurate estimation, the RSS measurements are additionally
used to correct the position. Algorithm 1 shows the principle of
the RSS measurement selection. After the state is updated with
the TDoA measurement model, every RSS value is checked if
a corrupted estimation is indicated. If there is an inconsistency,
the RSS measurement is used to correct the estimation.
Algorithm 1 Update Phase
update state with the TDoA measurement model
for all RSS measurements do
compute RSS value between tag and current anchor
if measured RSS value > computed RSS value then
update state with the RSS measurement model
end if
end for
A. TDoA Measurement Model
In the first step of the update phase, the TDoA measure-
ments are used to estimate the position. In an Uplink-TDoA
system there are several fixed anchor nodes, with known
positions and a well synchronized time basis. The anchors
detect the signal and save the time, when the signal arrives.
Afterwards all reached anchors forward the timestamp to a
central server, where the timestamps are processed to time

A1
Fig. 2. Multilateration
differences t∗,a with respect to a reference anchor t∗ as
follows:
t∗,a = t∗ − ta
where t∗ is the ToA measured at the reference anchor and
t the one at the ath anchor. The range differences da can be
a
computed as follows:
 prediction.
da = c t∗,a = (xk − x∗ )2 + (yk − y ∗ )2 + (hk − h∗ )2 −

(xk − xa )2 + (yk − y a )2 + (hk − ha )2 (5)
where c is the propagation velocity of the signal, xk , yk
and hk denote the coordinates of the tag, x∗ , y ∗ and h∗ the
reference anchor ones and xa , y a and ha the coordinates at the
ath anchor. In this case the height of all participants is assumed
to be constant. Each of these equations defines a hyperbola,
which intersect in the tag’s position, if the measurements have
no noise. This method is called multilateration and needs a
least two hyperbolas to compute an unique position. Figure 2
shows a possible constellation of a minimal configuration in
a TDoA network. In this case A1 is the reference anchor and
A2 respectively A3 are the counterparts.
The corresponding measurement vector zkT DoA is defined
as follows:
 T
zkTDoA = d1 d2 ... dA + νkTDoA .
The measurement covariance RTDoA of the random variable
νkTDoA is assumed to be constant in every step k.
One problem while using a TDoA system is to detect
multipath propagations and Non-line-of-Sight (NLOS) mea-
surements. Since there are two time measurements in every
computed difference it is difficult to assign the corrupted
measurement to a single anchor. In [16] four methods, which
handle those situations and discard defective measurements,
are presented. In this paper the methods are used as well in
order to improve the results. Two of them take advantage of
A3
A2
Fig. 3. Trilateration
the diversity hardware used in the anchor nodes to exclude
(4)
measurements. The third one is a simple logical verification.
Here TDoA measurements are discarded, if its value exceeds
the maximum ToF value between the used anchor nodes.
While the last one checks the most likely measurements due
to the state and the state covariance estimated in the EKF
B. RSS Measurement Model
In the second step of the update phase RSS measurements
are utilized to validate the previous. Figure 3 shows the
principle of the used algorithm, called trilateration. Therefore
at least three distances between a tag and the different anchors
are needed in the plane. The resulting distances are used to
define circles, which intersect in the tags position.
To apply the trilateration with RSS values the signal strength
must be translated into distances. In free space the power
of a signal decreases proportional inverse quadratic to the
distance between anchor and tag. In real applications this
model is not applicable, because the signal is affected by
several environment dependent effects. The following path loss
model is often used to estimate the power of a signal P (da )
received at anchor a at a given distance da :
(6)  a
d
P (da ) = P0 − 10np log10 (7)
d0
where P0 is the signal power at a short reference distance
d0 and np is the path-loss exponent. In order to determine the
concrete values a series of measurements has been done. The
tag was placed at different distances to an anchor, from 1 m
to 20 m with a step size of 1 m. Figure 4 shows the measured
RSS values in blue and the fitted path loss model in red. It
can be seen that the measurements have an inaccuracy of a
few dBm which results in larger distance errors depending on
 −40 12
median RSS Real Trajectory
EKF TDOA
fitted RSS
EKF TDoA+RSS
−45 Anchor
10

−50
RSS [dBm]

8
−55

−60

y [m]
6

−65
4

−70
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
tag−anchor separation [m]
2
Fig. 4. Path-Loss model

the real distance. To use 7 in the EKF da has to be computed
by Euclidean distance:

d =
a
(xk − xa )2 + (yk − y a )2 + (hk − ha )2 .
xk , yk , hk denote the coordinates of the tag and xa , y a , ha
the coordinates at the ath anchor. The measurement vector
zkRSS consists of all used RSS values:
 T
zkRSS = P (d1 ) P (d2 ) . . . P (dA ) + νkRSS
In this case the measurement covariance RkRSS is a varying
value. Due to the earlier described selection process of the
RSS values in algorithm 1 only measurements are used, which
are quite likely improving the position estimation. Thus the
measurement covariance Rka,RSS is build as follows:
2
a,RSS
−P (da ))
Rka,RSS = s b−(z
where s is a scaling factor and b is the basis. Both val-
ues depend on the environment of the application and were
determined experimental. The computation of the variance R
in this way ensures that larger differences in z a,RSS − P (da )
leads to a smaler variance and thus a higher belief in the RSS
measurements.
IV. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS
For evaluation purposes two test cases in different envi-
ronments are performed. The first one was realized outdoor
next to a wall of an office building. Six anchors were placed
at a height of 2 m in a rectangle, which covered an area of
10 by 20 m. In order to communicate among each other and
with a central server, every anchor is equipped with Ethernet.
The central server provides the TDoA and RSS measurements
to a locating engine. To increase the accuracy, each anchor
is equipped with two separate transceiver modules. The tag
0
−5 0 5 10 15 20
x [m]
Fig. 5. Outdoor test case
(8)
was attached in front of a person at his chest. He walked a
predefined quadratic path within the anchors area.
Figure 5 shows the results of the test case. The black curve
denotes the real trajectory, while the red and the green ones
are the filtered estimations. The wall of the office building
(9) was located above to the upper anchors. In this area the
TDoA measurements were strongly influenced by multipath
propagations of the radio signal. In this part of the figure the
red curve, which represents the EKF with TDoA and RSS
measurements has a quite better estimate than the reference
EKF with only TDoA values. The RSS values can temporary
correct the estimation. The error in the position of the com-
bined EKF is usually up to 1 m. The reference filter, however,
(10)
has an error up to 1.5 m.
The second test was performed in a large warehouse during
the normal distribution workings. This means that there are lift
trucks and stacked goods above a few meters placed within
the whole area. This causes more often Non-line-of-Sight
measurements in some critical parts of the warehouse. To cover
the entire warehouse of approximately 40 by 60 m with a good
reception, the number of anchors was increased to eight. The
person who walked the predefined track held the tag in his
hand during the test case. The real trajectory is represented by
the black curve in figure 6.
The figure shows the results of the warehouse test case as
well. Here again the EKF with TDoA and RSS measurements
is displayed in red while the TDoA EKF is represented in
green. In the upper part of the area high stacked pallets
interrupt the tags radio signal. This causes a poor estimation
of the position with only one or two anchors with line of sight.
Here initially both EKF variants cannot handle the situation
 60
50
Real Trajectory
EKF TDOA
40 EKF TDoA+RSS
Anchor
y [m]
30
20
10
0
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
x [m]
Fig. 6. Warehouse test case
but if there are a few good RSS measurements the TDoA+RSS
EKF can stabilize itself to a good estimation. The remaining
trajectory the RSS measurements help steady if the inaccuracy
increases while using only TDoA measurements.
In comparison to the first test case, the error in the position
estimation is increased, due to the more difficult conditions.
The filter achieves an accuracy of up to 3 m in the upper area
and mostly below 1 m in other parts of the warehouse.
V. C ONCLUSION AND F UTURE W ORK
In this paper a new fusion method for TDoA and RSS values
is presented. In order to obtain position estimates an EKF
is employed to combine both measurements. The filter was
evaluated in two different environments. It has been shown,
that the EKF has a positive influence in certain situations,
when the TDoA measurements leads to a poor estimation.
But due to the low accuracy and resolution of the RSS
measurements the filter cannot improve the results in general.
To achieve a larger improvement in the accuracy additional
sensors will be used in future studies. An accelerometer and
orientation sensors, such as a digital compass or a gyroscope,
can lead to a more precise prediction of the filter. The
accelerometer will be used to detect steps and the length of
the steps as well. Moreover auxiliary information like maps
can be helpful. Especially in buildings a map could help to
avoid estimations that are not accessible, like positions in the
wall.
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