Map-Aware Models for Indoor Wireless Localization Systems: An Experimental Study

The accuracy of indoor wireless localization systems can be substantially enhanced by map-awareness, i.e., by the knowledge of the map of the environment in which localization signals are acquired. In fact, this knowledge can be exploited to cancel out, at least to some extent, the signal degradation due to propagation through physical obstructions, i.e., to the so called non-line-of-sight bias. This result can be achieved by developing novel localization techniques that rely on proper map-aware statistical modelling of the measurements they process. In this manuscript a unified statistical model for the measurements acquired in map-aware localization systems based on time-of-arrival and received signal strength techniques is developed and its experimental validation is illustrated. Finally, the accuracy of the proposed map-aware model is assessed and compared with that offered by its map-unaware counterparts. Our numerical results show that, when the quality of acquired measurements is poor, map-aware modelling can enhance localization accuracy by up to 110% in certain scenarios.Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures, 1 table. IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, 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

CIR Parametric Rules Precocity For Ranging Error Mitigation In IR-UWB

The cutting-edge technology to support high ranging accuracy within the indoor environment is Impulse Radio Ultra Wide Band (IR-UWB) standard. Besides accuracy, IR-UWB’s low-complex architecture and low power consumption align well with mobile devices. A prime challenge in indoor IR-UWB based localization is to achieve a position accuracy under non-line-of-sight (NLOS) and multipath propagation (MPP) conditions. Another challenge is to achieve acceptable accuracy in the conditions mentioned above without any significant increase in latency and computational burden. This dissertation proposes a solution for addressing the accuracy and reliability problem of indoor localization system satisfying acceptable delay or computational complexity overhead. The proposed methodology is based on rules for identification of line-of-sight (LOS) and NLOS and the range error bias estimation and correction due to NLOS and MPP conditions. The proposed methodology provides accuracy for two major application domains, namely, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and indoor tracking and navigation (ITN). This dissertation offers two different solutions for the localization problem. The first solution is a rules-based classification of LOS / NLOS and geometric-based range correction for WSN. In the first solution, the Boolean logic based classification is designed for identification of LOS/NLOS. The logic is based on channel impulse response (CIR) parameters. The second solution is based on fuzzy logic. The fuzzy based solution is appealing well for the stringent precision requirements in ITN. In this solution, the parametric Boolean logic from the first solution is converted and expanded into rules. These rules are implemented into a fuzzy logic based mechanism for designing a fuzzy inference system. The system estimates the ranging errors and correcting unmitigated ranges. The expanded rules and designed methodology are based on theoretical analysis and empirical observations of the parameters. The rules accommodate the parameters uncertainties for estimating the ranging error through the relationship between the input parameters uncertainties and ranging error using fuzzy inference mechanism. The proposed solutions are evaluated using real-world measurements in different indoor environments. The performance of the proposed solutions is also evaluated in terms of true classification rate, residual ranging errors’ cumulative distributions and probability density distributions, as well as outage probabilities. Evaluation results show that the true classification rate is more than 95%. Moreover, using the proposed fuzzy logic based solution, the residual errors convergence of 90% is attained for error threshold of 10 cm, and the reliability of the localization system is also more than 90% for error threshold of 15 cm

Identification and Mitigation of NLOS based on Channel Information Rules for Indoor UWB Localization

Indoor localization is an emerging technology that can be utilized for developing products and services for commercial usage, public safety, military applications and so forth. Commercially it can be applied to track children, people with special needs, help navigate blind people, locate equipment, mobile robots, etc. The objective of this thesis is to enable an indoor mobile vehicle to determine its location and thereby making it capable of autonomous localization under Non-light of sight (NLOS) conditions. The solution developed is based on Ultra Wideband (UWB) based Indoor Positioning System (IPS) in the building. The proposed method increases robustness, scalability, and accuracy of location. The out of the box system of DecaWave TREK1000 provides tag tracking features but has no method to detect and mitigate location inaccuracies due to the multipath effect from physical obstacles found in an indoor environment. This NLOS condition causes ranges to be positively biased, hence the wrong location is reported. Our approach to deal with the NLOS problem is based on the use of Rules Classifier, which is based on channel information. Once better range readings are achieved, approximate location is calculated based on Time of Flight (TOF). Moreover, the proposed rule based IPS can be easily implemented on hardware due to the low complexity. The measurement results, which was obtained using the proposed mitigation algorithm, show considerable improvements in the accuracy of the location estimation which can be used in different IPS applications requiring centimeter level precision. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated experimentally using an indoor positioning platform in a laboratory environment, and is shown to be significantly better than conventional approaches. The maximum positioning error is reduced to 15 cm for NLOS using both an offline and real time tracking algorithm extended from the proposed approach

Bias Compensation for UWB Ranging for Pedestrian Geolocation Applications

We present an effective bias compensation method to process none-line-of-sight (NLoS) and long distance line-of-sight (LD-LoS) ultra wideband (UWB) range measurement signals used to aid a pedestrian inertial navigation system (INS). The common UWB bias compensation techniques use machine learning methods to identify and remove the bias in the measurements. These techniques are computationally expensive and require extensive prior data. Here, we propose to use an algorithmic compensation technique that accounts for the bias by estimating it using the Schmidt-Kalman filter (SKF). Next, we exploit the positivity of the error in the UWB range measurements to propose a novel constrained sigma point based correction filtering that can be used atop the SKF for further improvement in the positioning accuracy of the UWB-aided pedestrian inertial navigation. Experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of our methods

Target Tracking in Confined Environments with Uncertain Sensor Positions

To ensure safety in confined environments such as mines or subway tunnels, a (wireless) sensor network can be deployed to monitor various environmental conditions. One of its most important applications is to track personnel, mobile equipment and vehicles. However, the state-of-the-art algorithms assume that the positions of the sensors are perfectly known, which is not necessarily true due to imprecise placement and/or dropping of sensors. Therefore, we propose an automatic approach for simultaneous refinement of sensors' positions and target tracking. We divide the considered area in a finite number of cells, define dynamic and measurement models, and apply a discrete variant of belief propagation which can efficiently solve this high-dimensional problem, and handle all non-Gaussian uncertainties expected in this kind of environments. Finally, we use ray-tracing simulation to generate an artificial mine-like environment and generate synthetic measurement data. According to our extensive simulation study, the proposed approach performs significantly better than standard Bayesian target tracking and localization algorithms, and provides robustness against outliers.Comment: IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, 201

Ultra-low-power Range Error Mitigation for Ultra-wideband Precise Localization

Precise and accurate localization in outdoor and indoor environments is a challenging problem that currently constitutes a significant limitation for several practical applications. Ultra-wideband (UWB) localization technology represents a valuable low-cost solution to the problem. However, non-line-of-sight (NLOS) conditions and complexity of the specific radio environment can easily introduce a positive bias in the ranging measurement, resulting in highly inaccurate and unsatisfactory position estimation. In the light of this, we leverage the latest advancement in deep neural network optimization techniques and their implementation on ultra-low-power microcontrollers to introduce an effective range error mitigation solution that provides corrections in either NLOS or LOS conditions with a few mW of power. Our extensive experimentation endorses the advantages and improvements of our low-cost and power-efficient methodology