scholarly journals LOCATE-US: Indoor Positioning for Mobile Devices Using Encoded Ultrasonic Signals, Inertial Sensors and Graph-Matching

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (6) ◽  
pp. 1950
Author(s):  
David Gualda ◽  
María Carmen Pérez-Rubio ◽  
Jesús Ureña ◽  
Sergio Pérez-Bachiller ◽  
José Manuel Villadangos ◽  
...  

Indoor positioning remains a challenge and, despite much research and development carried out in the last decade, there is still no standard as with the Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) outdoors. This paper presents an indoor positioning system called LOCATE-US with adjustable granularity for use with commercial mobile devices, such as smartphones or tablets. LOCATE-US is privacy-oriented and allows every device to compute its own position by fusing ultrasonic, inertial sensor measurements and map information. Ultrasonic Local Positioning Systems (U-LPS) based on encoded signals are placed in critical zones that require an accuracy below a few decimeters to correct the accumulated drift errors of the inertial measurements. These systems are well suited to work at room level as walls confine acoustic waves inside. To avoid audible artifacts, the U-LPS emission is set at 41.67 kHz, and an ultrasonic acquisition module with reduced dimensions is attached to the mobile device through the USB port to capture signals. Processing in the mobile device involves an improved Time Differences of Arrival (TDOA) estimation that is fused with the measurements from an external inertial sensor to obtain real-time location and trajectory display at a 10 Hz rate. Graph-matching has also been included, considering available prior knowledge about the navigation scenario. This kind of device is an adequate platform for Location-Based Services (LBS), enabling applications such as augmented reality, guiding applications, or people monitoring and assistance. The system architecture can easily incorporate new sensors in the future, such as UWB, RFiD or others.

Electronics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ghulam Hussain ◽  
Muhammad Jabbar ◽  
Jun-Dong Cho ◽  
Sangmin Bae

The number of studies on the development of indoor positioning systems has increased recently due to the growing demands of the various location-based services. Inertial sensors available in commercial smartphones play an important role in indoor localization and navigation owing to their highly accurate localization performance. In this study, the inertial sensors of a smartphone, which generate distinct patterns for physical activities and action units (AUs), are employed to localize a target in an indoor environment. These AUs, (such as a left turn, right turn, normal step, short step, or long step), help to accurately estimate the indoor location of a target. By taking advantage of sophisticated deep learning algorithms, we propose a novel approach for indoor navigation based on long short-term memory (LSTM). The LSTM accurately recognizes physical activities and related AUs by automatically extracting the efficient features from the distinct patterns of the input data. Experiment results show that LSTM provides a significant improvement in the indoor positioning performance through the recognition task. The proposed system achieves a better localization performance than the trivial fingerprinting method, with an average error of 0.782 m in an indoor area of 128.6 m2. Additionally, the proposed system exhibited robust performance by excluding the abnormal activity from the pedestrian activities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (15) ◽  
pp. 6805
Author(s):  
Khaoula Mannay ◽  
Jesús Ureña ◽  
Álvaro Hernández ◽  
José M. Villadangos ◽  
Mohsen Machhout ◽  
...  

Indoor positioning systems have become a feasible solution for the current development of multiple location-based services and applications. They often consist of deploying a certain set of beacons in the environment to create a coverage volume, wherein some receivers, such as robots, drones or smart devices, can move while estimating their own position. Their final accuracy and performance mainly depend on several factors: the workspace size and its nature, the technologies involved (Wi-Fi, ultrasound, light, RF), etc. This work evaluates a 3D ultrasonic local positioning system (3D-ULPS) based on three independent ULPSs installed at specific positions to cover almost all the workspace and position mobile ultrasonic receivers in the environment. Because the proposal deals with numerous ultrasonic emitters, it is possible to determine different time differences of arrival (TDOA) between them and the receiver. In that context, the selection of a suitable fusion method to merge all this information into a final position estimate is a key aspect of the proposal. A linear Kalman filter (LKF) and an adaptive Kalman filter (AKF) are proposed in that regard for a loosely coupled approach, where the positions obtained from each ULPS are merged together. On the other hand, as a tightly coupled method, an extended Kalman filter (EKF) is also applied to merge the raw measurements from all the ULPSs into a final position estimate. Simulations and experimental tests were carried out and validated both approaches, thus providing average errors in the centimetre range for the EKF version, in contrast to errors up to the meter range from the independent (not merged) ULPSs.


Author(s):  
Shih-Hau Fang

Indoor positioning systems have received increasing attention for supporting location-based services in indoor environments. Received signal strength (RSS), mostly utilized in Wi-Fi fingerprinting systems, is known to be unreliable due to two reasons: orientation mismatch and variations in hardware. This chapter introduces an approach based on histogram equalization to compensate for orientation mismatch in robust Wi-Fi localization. The proposed method involves converting the temporal-spatial radio signal strength into a reference function (i.e., equalizing the histogram). This chapter also introduces an enhanced positioning feature, which is called delta-fused principal strength, to enhance the robustness of Wi-Fi localization against the problem of heterogeneous hardware. This algorithm computes the pairwise delta RSS and then integrates with RSS using principal component analysis. The proposed methods effectively and efficiently improve the robustness of location estimation in the presence of mismatch orientation and hardware variations, respectively.


Author(s):  
Robin Deegan

Humans are approaching a new and intriguing time with regards to Mobile Human Computer Interaction. For years we have observed the processing power, memory capabilities and battery life of the mobile device increase exponentially. While at the same time mobile devices were converging with additional technologies such as increased connectivity, external peripherals, GPS and location based services etc. But what are the cognitive costs associated with these advancements? The software used on mobile devices is also becoming more sophisticated, demanding more from our limited mental resources. Furthermore, this complex software is being used in distracting environments such as in cars, busses, trains and noisy communal areas. These environments, themselves, have steadily become increasingly more complex and cognitively demanding. Increasingly complex software, installed on increasingly complex mobile devices, being used in increasing complex environments is presenting Mobile HCI with serious challenges. This paper presents a brief overview of five experiments before presenting a final experiment in detail. These experiments attempt to understand the relationship between cognition, distraction, usability and performance. The research determines that some distractions affect usability and not performance while others affect performance but not usability. This paper concludes with a reinforced argument for the development of a cognitive load aware system.


Sensors ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (19) ◽  
pp. 4351 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashraf ◽  
Hur ◽  
Park

The applications of location-based services require precise location information of a user both indoors and outdoors. Global positioning system’s reduced accuracy for indoor environments necessitated the initiation of Indoor Positioning Systems (IPSs). However, the development of an IPS which can determine the user’s position with heterogeneous smartphones in the same fashion is a challenging problem. The performance of Wi-Fi fingerprinting-based IPSs is degraded by many factors including shadowing, absorption, and interference caused by obstacles, human mobility, and body loss. Moreover, the use of various smartphones and different orientations of the very same smartphone can limit its positioning accuracy as well. As Wi-Fi fingerprinting is based on Received Signal Strength (RSS) vector, it is prone to dynamic intrinsic limitations of radio propagation, including changes over time, and far away locations having similar RSS vector. This article presents a Wi-Fi fingerprinting approach that exploits Wi-Fi Access Points (APs) coverage area and does not utilize the RSS vector. Using the concepts of APs coverage area uniqueness and coverage area overlap, the proposed approach calculates the user’s current position with the help of APs’ intersection area. The experimental results demonstrate that the device dependency can be mitigated by making the fingerprinting database with the proposed approach. The experiments performed at a public place proves that positioning accuracy can also be increased because the proposed approach performs well in dynamic environments with human mobility. The impact of human body loss is studied as well.


2013 ◽  
Vol 734-737 ◽  
pp. 3214-3219
Author(s):  
Hai Dong Zhong ◽  
Ping Li ◽  
Shao Zhong Zhang ◽  
Wen Ting Yuan ◽  
Xu Dong Zhao ◽  
...  

With the tremendous advances in mobile computing and communication capabilities, rapid proliferation of mobile devices, increasing powerful functions, and decreasing device costs, we are seeing a explosively growth in mobile e-commerce in various consumer and business markets. On the basis of analyzing demands of both buyers and seller in mobile e-commerce, the paper put forward a novel concept and technological framework of Location Based Services (LBS) driven mobile e-commerce. Some LBS related functions, in mobile device terminal, of the prototype system based on the architecture put forward are implemented. Also, some key issues of LBS based mobile e-commerce, such as positioning accuracy and new privacy and security risks, are discussed in detail.


Author(s):  
E. Gulo ◽  
G. Sohn ◽  
A. Afnan

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> With the increasing number and usage of mobile devices in people’s daily life, indoor positioning has attracted a lot attention from both academia and industry for the purpose of providing location-aware services. This work proposes an indoor positioning system, primarily based on WLAN fingerprint matching, that includes various minor improvements to improve the positioning accuracy of the algorithm, as well as improve the quality and reduce the collection time of the reference fingerprints. In addition, a novel Path Evaluation and Retroactive Adjustment module is employed; it intends to improve the positioning accuracy of the system in a similar fashion to a Pedestrian Dead Reckoning implemented along with WLAN Fingerprint Matching in a Sensor Fusion system. The benefit of this approach being that it avoids the requirement of inertial sensor data, as well as its intensive computation and power use, while providing a similar accuracy improvement to Pedestrian Dead Reckoning. Our experimental results demonstrate that this may be a viable approach for positioning using mobile devices in an indoor environment.</p>


2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Tamazin ◽  
A. Noureldin ◽  
M. J. Korenberg

Accessibility to inertial navigation systems (INS) has been severely limited by cost in the past. The introduction of low-cost microelectromechanical system-based INS to be integrated with GPS in order to provide a reliable positioning solution has provided more wide spread use in mobile devices. The random errors of the MEMS inertial sensors may deteriorate the overall system accuracy in mobile devices. These errors are modeled stochastically and are included in the error model of the estimated techniques used such as Kalman filter or Particle filter. First-order Gauss-Markov model is usually used to describe the stochastic nature of these errors. However, if the autocorrelation sequences of these random components are examined, it can be determined that first-order Gauss-Markov model is not adequate to describe such stochastic behavior. A robust modeling technique based on fast orthogonal search is introduced to remove MEMS-based inertial sensor errors inside mobile devices that are used for several location-based services. The proposed method is applied to MEMS-based gyroscopes and accelerometers. Results show that the proposed method models low-cost MEMS sensors errors with no need for denoising techniques and using smaller model order and less computation, outperforming traditional methods by two orders of magnitude.


Author(s):  
Vinh Truong-Quang ◽  
Thong Ho-Sy

WiFi-based indoor positioning is widely exploited thanks to the existing WiFi infrastructure in buildings and built-in sensors in smartphones. The techniques for indoor positioning require the high-density training data to archive high accuracy with high computation complexity. In this paper, the approach for indoor positioning systems which is called the maximum convergence algorithm is proposed to find the accurate location by the strongest receiver signal in the small cluster and K nearest neighbours (KNN) of other clusters. Also, the K-mean clustering is deployed for each access point to reduce the computation complexity of the offline databases. Moreover, the pedestrian dead reckoning (PDR) method and Kalman filter with the information from the received signal strength (RSS) and inertial sensors are applied to the WiFi fingerprinting to increase the efficiency of the mobile object's position. The different experiments are performed to compare the proposed algorithm with the others using KNN and PDR. The recommended framework demonstrates significant proceed based on the results. The average precision of this system can be lower than 1.02 meters when testing in the laboratory environment with an area of 7x7 m using three access points.


Author(s):  
Mikuláš Muroň ◽  
David Procházka

Localisation via Wi‑Fi networks is one of the possible techniques which can be used for positioning inside buildings or in other places without the GPS signal. The accurate indoor positioning system can help users with localisation or navigation within unfamiliar places. Almost all buildings are covered with the Wi‑Fi signal. Using the currently existing infrastructure will minimise cost for construction other types of indoor positioning systems. Among other reasons, usage of Wi‑Fi for positioning is also convenient because almost every mobile device has a Wi‑Fi capability and therefore the system can be easily used by everyone. However, an important factor is the precision of such a solution. The article is focused on the evaluation of Wi‑Fi localisation precision within the university grounds.


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