Advances in artificial vision can achieve accuracies of several c

Advances in artificial vision can achieve accuracies of several centimeters at the expense of having to use an expensive infrastructure with a low modularity and high processing demand [6].Unlike these technologies, the ultrasound signal has several advantages such as a slow propagation speed, a negligible penetration in walls and a low cost of the transducers. The characteristics of the ultrasound signal are interesting for use in indoor ROCK1 positioning systems (IPS). The accuracy achieved by ultrasound is typically of a few centimeters. The time-of-flight (TOF) of the signal in its propagation from a transmitter device to a receiver device is used to calculate the distance between them taking into account the propagation speed of sound. This requires a correct temporal synchronization of the network nodes.The synchronization can be easily achieved through electrical pulses in systems with a wired connection between nodes. ATLINTIDA [7] is an example of this type of systems where the transmitter nodes (with fixed position) are wired to an interface through which they also receive power supply. The receipt of an electrical pulse in the transmitters indicates the beginning of signal transmission. On the other hand, the mobile node is battery operated. This node uses a radio module for transferring the received signal to an AD/DA card connected to a PC that calculates its position. The wired connection complicates the system installation and introduces additional costs in its deployment. This problem is solved using a wireless connection between nodes, although it entails others synchronization problems and requires to change the batteries regularly.The synchronization problem in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is usually solved using radio frequency signals (RF). In the literature several examples of positioning systems based on ultrasound and RF can be found. The negligible propagation delay of the RF signal allows one to use this signal for beginning synchronously the transmission and reception processes of ultrasonic signal. Thus, achieving accurate distance estimations (inferred from the TOF of ultrasonic signal) is possible.For example, Active Bat [8] uses an infrastructure of fixed nodes (beacons) located on the ceiling that operate as ultrasound receivers. The target node (mobile) works as ultrasound emitter and its location is calculated from information of time-of-flight sent by the beacons to a central node. In this system a 433 MHz radio link for providing synchronization information to the network nodes is used. On the contrary, in Cricket system [9] the mobile node works as ultrasonic receiver and the beacons work as ultrasonic transmitters. The ultrasonic pulse transmission is accompanied by an RF pulse to provide the necessary synchronization.

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