Direct Positioning with Channel Database Assistance

When we have knowledge of the positions of nearby walls and buildings, estimating the source location becomes a very efficient way of characterizing and estimating a radio channel. We consider localization performance with and without this knowledge. We treat the multipath channel as a set of "virtual receivers" whose positions can be pre-stored in a channel database. Using wall knowledge, we develop a generalized MUSIC algorithm that treats the wall reflection parameter as a nuisance variable. We compare this to a classic MVDR direct positioning algorithm that lacks wall knowledge. In a simple scenario, we find that lack of wall knowledge can increase location error by 7-100x, depending on the number of antennas, SNR, and true reflection parameter. Interestingly, as the number of antennas increases, the value of wall knowledge decreases.