Indoor wireless communications and applications

Chapter 3 addresses challenges in radio link and system design in indoor scenarios. Given the fact that most human activities take place in indoor environments, the need for supporting ubiquitous indoor data connectivity and location/tracking service becomes even more important than in the previous decades. Specific technical challenges addressed in this section are(i), modelling complex indoor radio channels for effective antenna deployment, (ii), potential of millimeter-wave (mm-wave) radios for supporting higher data rates, and (iii), feasible indoor localisation and tracking techniques, which are summarised in three dedicated sections of this chapter

Experimental evaluation of UWB indoor positioning for indoor track cycling

Accurate radio frequency (RF)-based indoor localization systems are more and more applied during sports. The most accurate RF-based localization systems use ultra-wideband (UWB) technology; this is why this technology is the most prevalent. UWB positioning systems allow for an in-depth analysis of the performance of athletes during training and competition. There is no research available that investigates the feasibility of UWB technology for indoor track cycling. In this paper, we investigate the optimal position to mount the UWB hardware for that specific use case. Different positions on the bicycle and cyclist were evaluated based on accuracy, received power level, line-of-sight, maximum communication range, and comfort. Next to this, the energy consumption of our UWB system was evaluated. We found that the optimal hardware position was the lower back, with a median ranging error of 22 cm (infrastructure hardware placed at 2.3 m). The energy consumption of our UWB system is also taken into account. Applied to our setup with the hardware mounted at the lower back, the maximum communication range varies between 32.6 m and 43.8 m. This shows that UWB localization systems are suitable for indoor positioning of track cyclists

RFID Localisation For Internet Of Things Smart Homes: A Survey

The Internet of Things (IoT) enables numerous business opportunities in fields as diverse as e-health, smart cities, smart homes, among many others. The IoT incorporates multiple long-range, short-range, and personal area wireless networks and technologies into the designs of IoT applications. Localisation in indoor positioning systems plays an important role in the IoT. Location Based IoT applications range from tracking objects and people in real-time, assets management, agriculture, assisted monitoring technologies for healthcare, and smart homes, to name a few. Radio Frequency based systems for indoor positioning such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a key enabler technology for the IoT due to its costeffective, high readability rates, automatic identification and, importantly, its energy efficiency characteristic. This paper reviews the state-of-the-art RFID technologies in IoT Smart Homes applications. It presents several comparable studies of RFID based projects in smart homes and discusses the applications, techniques, algorithms, and challenges of adopting RFID technologies in IoT smart home systems.Comment: 18 pages, 2 figures, 3 table

A Statistical Analysis of Multipath Interference for Impulse Radio UWB Systems

In this paper, we develop a statistical characterization of the multipath interference in an Impulse Radio (IR)-UWB system, considering the standardized IEEE 802.15.4a channel model. In such systems, the chip length has to be carefully tuned as all the propagation paths located beyond this limit can cause interframe/intersymbol interferences (IFI/ISI). Our approach aims at computing the probability density function (PDF) of the power of all multipath components with delays larger than the chip time, so as to prevent such interferences. Exact analytical expressions are derived first for the probability that the chip length falls into a particular cluster of the multipath propagation model and for the statistics of the number of paths spread over several contiguous clusters. A power delay profile (PDP) approximation is then used to evaluate the total interference power as the problem appears to be mathematically intractable. Using the proposed closed-form expressions, and assuming minimal prior information on the channel state, a rapid update of the chip time value is enabled so as to control the signal to interference plus noise ratio.Comment: 17 pages, 9 figures; submitted to the Journal of the Franklin Institute on Sept. 24, 201

A survey of localization in wireless sensor network

Localization is one of the key techniques in wireless sensor network. The location estimation methods can be classified into target/source localization and node self-localization. In target localization, we mainly introduce the energy-based method. Then we investigate the node self-localization methods. Since the widespread adoption of the wireless sensor network, the localization methods are different in various applications. And there are several challenges in some special scenarios. In this paper, we present a comprehensive survey of these challenges: localization in non-line-of-sight, node selection criteria for localization in energy-constrained network, scheduling the sensor node to optimize the tradeoff between localization performance and energy consumption, cooperative node localization, and localization algorithm in heterogeneous network. Finally, we introduce the evaluation criteria for localization in wireless sensor network