Performance Analysis of Incoherent RF Tomography Using Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper addresses the problem of imaging targets using radio signals transmitted by the nodes of a wireless sensor network. The sensors are assumed to be simple wireless communication devices, e.g., Wi-Fi cards, which are capable to measure only the received signal power. A fully incoherent linear inverse scattering approach is herein tackled, and a Rytov-based model is considered. The main contribution of this paper is concerned with the evaluation of the imaging performance achievable when phase information is not exploited in the inversion stage. The analysis is worked out with the singular value decomposition tool, in order to foresee the resolution limits for a given network arrangement and noise level on data. The popular coherent inverse scattering model of Born approximation is also considered as benchmark for comparison purposes. Numerical results based on full-wave data are reported to highlight the actual capabilities of the incoherent tomography.