Received signal strength indication-based localisation method with unknown path-loss exponent for HVDC electric field measurement

The electric field environment under high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission lines is an important design consideration. In the wireless sensor networks for electric field measurement system under the HVDC transmission lines, it is necessary to obtain the electric field distribution with multiple sensors. The accurate localisation of sensing nodes is essential to the analysis of measurement results. However, most current techniques are limited to constant measurement environment with fixed and known path-loss exponent. Here, the authors report a localisation method based on received signal strength indication with unknown path-loss exponent for the localisation of one-dimensional linear topology wireless networks in the electric field measurement system. The optimisation method is utilised to obtain the optimal pass-loss parameter without involving the previous environment parameters. Afterwards, simulations are employed to demonstrate the feasibility and the effectiveness of the proposed method by comparing with other methods.