Towards A Realistic Path Planning Evaluation Model for Micro Aerial Vehicle-Assisted Localization of Wi-Fi Nodes

Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV)-assisted localization of wireless nodes in a given area is especially important in post-disaster scenarios where no other communication infrastructure is accessibleDifferent from related work solely focusing on simulations, we have done a measurement campaign using a multirotor MAV to derive a realistic propagation model for our scenario. Based on this propagation model and a novel positioning approach, the performance of different trajectories is reevaluatedOur results show that in practice, the variance of the measurements is higher, than commonly expected in related work on MAV-assisted localization. As a result, the study of our developed trajectories show localization errors of 6-7m in a 400x400m2 area. We also show that adaptive trajectories outperform state-of-the-art algorithms and are able to localize at least 90% of the nodes in under 20 minutes. Thus, they also outperform other algorithms with respect to the effectiveness of the trajectory.