2,723 research outputs found
Wi-PoS : a low-cost, open source ultra-wideband (UWB) hardware platform with long range sub-GHz backbone
Ultra-wideband (UWB) localization is one of the most promising approaches for indoor localization due to its accurate positioning capabilities, immunity against multipath fading, and excellent resilience against narrowband interference. However, UWB researchers are currently limited by the small amount of feasible open source hardware that is publicly available. We developed a new open source hardware platform, Wi-PoS, for precise UWB localization based on Decawave’s DW1000 UWB transceiver with several unique features: support of both long-range sub-GHz and 2.4 GHz back-end communication between nodes, flexible interfacing with external UWB antennas, and an easy implementation of the MAC layer with the Time-Annotated Instruction Set Computer (TAISC) framework. Both hardware and software are open source and all parameters of the UWB ranging can be adjusted, calibrated, and analyzed. This paper explains the main specifications of the hardware platform, illustrates design decisions, and evaluates the performance of the board in terms of range, accuracy, and energy consumption. The accuracy of the ranging system was below 10 cm in an indoor lab environment at distances up to 5 m, and accuracy smaller than 5 cm was obtained at 50 and 75 m in an outdoor environment. A theoretical model was derived for predicting the path loss and the influence of the most important ground reflection. At the same time, the average energy consumption of the hardware was very low with only 81 mA for a tag node and 63 mA for the active anchor nodes, permitting the system to run for several days on a mobile battery pack and allowing easy and fast deployment on sites without an accessible power supply or backbone network. The UWB hardware platform demonstrated flexibility, easy installation, and low power consumption
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
Cooperative Relative Positioning of Mobile Users by Fusing IMU Inertial and UWB Ranging Information
Relative positioning between multiple mobile users is essential for many
applications, such as search and rescue in disaster areas or human social
interaction. Inertial-measurement unit (IMU) is promising to determine the
change of position over short periods of time, but it is very sensitive to
error accumulation over long term run. By equipping the mobile users with
ranging unit, e.g. ultra-wideband (UWB), it is possible to achieve accurate
relative positioning by trilateration-based approaches. As compared to vision
or laser-based sensors, the UWB does not need to be with in line-of-sight and
provides accurate distance estimation. However, UWB does not provide any
bearing information and the communication range is limited, thus UWB alone
cannot determine the user location without any ambiguity. In this paper, we
propose an approach to combine IMU inertial and UWB ranging measurement for
relative positioning between multiple mobile users without the knowledge of the
infrastructure. We incorporate the UWB and the IMU measurement into a
probabilistic-based framework, which allows to cooperatively position a group
of mobile users and recover from positioning failures. We have conducted
extensive experiments to demonstrate the benefits of incorporating IMU inertial
and UWB ranging measurements.Comment: accepted by ICRA 201
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
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
Technologies and solutions for location-based services in smart cities: past, present, and future
Location-based services (LBS) in smart cities have drastically altered the way cities operate, giving a new dimension to the life of citizens. LBS rely on location of a device, where proximity estimation remains at its core. The applications of LBS range from social networking and marketing to vehicle-toeverything communications. In many of these applications, there is an increasing need and trend to learn the physical distance between nearby devices. This paper elaborates upon the current needs of proximity estimation in LBS and compares them against the available Localization and Proximity (LP) finding technologies (LP technologies in short). These technologies are compared for their accuracies and performance based on various different parameters, including latency, energy consumption, security, complexity, and throughput. Hereafter, a classification of these technologies, based on various different smart city applications, is presented. Finally, we discuss some emerging LP technologies that enable proximity estimation in LBS and present some future research areas
A Low Cost UWB Based Solution for Direct Georeferencing UAV Photogrammetry
Thanks to their flexibility and availability at reduced costs, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been recently used on a wide range of applications and conditions. Among these, they can play an important role in monitoring critical events (e.g., disaster monitoring) when the presence of humans close to the scene shall be avoided for safety reasons, in precision farming and surveying. Despite the very large number of possible applications, their usage is mainly limited by the availability of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) in the considered environment: indeed, GNSS is of fundamental importance in order to reduce positioning error derived by the drift of (low-cost) Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) internal sensors. In order to make the usage of UAVs possible even in critical environments (when GNSS is not available or not reliable, e.g., close to mountains or in city centers, close to high buildings), this paper considers the use of a low cost Ultra Wide-Band (UWB) system as the positioning method. Furthermore, assuming the use of a calibrated camera, UWB positioning is exploited to achieve metric reconstruction on a local coordinate system. Once the georeferenced position of at least three points (e.g., positions of three UWB devices) is known, then georeferencing can be obtained, as well. The proposed approach is validated on a specific case study, the reconstruction of the façade of a university building. Average error on 90 check points distributed over the building façade, obtained by georeferencing by means of the georeferenced positions of four UWB devices at fixed positions, is 0.29 m. For comparison, the average error obtained by using four ground control points is 0.18 m
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