299 research outputs found
On power line positioning systems
Power line infrastructure is available almost everywhere. Positioning systems aim to estimate where a device or target is. Consequently, there may be an opportunity to use power lines for positioning purposes. This survey article reports the different efforts, working principles, and possibilities for implementing positioning systems relying on power line infrastructure for power line positioning systems (PLPS). Since Power Line Communication (PLC) systems of different characteristics have been deployed to provide communication services using the existing mains, we also address how PLC systems may be employed to build positioning systems. Although some efforts exist, PLPS are still prospective and thus open to research and development, and we try to indicate the possible directions and potential applications for PLPS.European Commissio
GNSS-free outdoor localization techniques for resource-constrained IoT architectures : a literature review
Large-scale deployments of the Internet of Things (IoT) are adopted for performance
improvement and cost reduction in several application domains. The four main IoT application
domains covered throughout this article are smart cities, smart transportation, smart healthcare, and
smart manufacturing. To increase IoT applicability, data generated by the IoT devices need to be
time-stamped and spatially contextualized. LPWANs have become an attractive solution for outdoor
localization and received significant attention from the research community due to low-power,
low-cost, and long-range communication. In addition, its signals can be used for communication
and localization simultaneously. There are different proposed localization methods to obtain the
IoT relative location. Each category of these proposed methods has pros and cons that make them
useful for specific IoT systems. Nevertheless, there are some limitations in proposed localization
methods that need to be eliminated to meet the IoT ecosystem needs completely. This has motivated
this work and provided the following contributions: (1) definition of the main requirements and
limitations of outdoor localization techniques for the IoT ecosystem, (2) description of the most
relevant GNSS-free outdoor localization methods with a focus on LPWAN technologies, (3) survey
the most relevant methods used within the IoT ecosystem for improving GNSS-free localization
accuracy, and (4) discussion covering the open challenges and future directions within the field.
Some of the important open issues that have different requirements in different IoT systems include
energy consumption, security and privacy, accuracy, and scalability. This paper provides an overview
of research works that have been published between 2018 to July 2021 and made available through
the Google Scholar database.5311-8814-F0ED | Sara Maria da Cruz Maia de Oliveira PaivaN/
Real-world deployment of low-cost indoor positioning systems for industrial applications
The deployment of an Indoor Position System (IPS) in the real-world raised many challenges, such as installation of infrastructure, the calibration process or modelling of the building's floor plan. For Wi-Fi-based IPSs, deployments often require a laborious and time-consuming site survey to build a Radio Map (RM), which tends to become outdated over time due to several factors. In this paper, we evaluate different deployment methods of a Wi-Fi-based IPS in an industrial environment. The proposed solution works in scenarios with different space restrictions and automatically builds a RM using industrial vehicles in operation. Localization and tracking of industrial vehicles, equipped with low-cost sensors, is achieved with a particle filter, which combines Wi-Fi measurements with heading and displacement data. This allows to automatically annotate and add new samples to a RM, named vehicle Radio Map (vRM), without human intervention. In industrial environments, vRMs can be used with Wi-Fi fingerprinting to locate human operators, industrial vehicles, or other assets, allowing to improve logistics, monitoring of operations, and safety of operators. Experiments in an industrial building show that the proposed solution is capable of automatically building a high-quality vRM in different scenarios, i.e., considering a complete floor plan, a partial floor plan or without a floor plan. Obtained results revealed that vRMs can be used in Wi-Fi fingerprinting with better accuracy than a traditional RM. Sub-meter accuracies were obtained for an industrial vehicle prototype after deployment in a real building.This work was supported in part by the Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia-FCT through the Research and Development Units Project Scope under Grant UIDB/00319/2020 and in part by the Ph.D. Fellowship under Grant PD/BD/137401/2018. The associate editor coordinating the review of this article and approving it for publication was Prof. Masanori Sugimoto
Self-healing radio maps of wireless networks for indoor positioning
Programa Doutoral em Telecomunicações MAP-tele das Universidades do Minho, Aveiro e PortoA Indústria 4.0 está a impulsionar a mudança para novas formas de produção e otimização em tempo real
nos espaços industriais que beneficiam das capacidades da Internet of Things (IoT) nomeadamente,
a localização de veÃculos para monitorização e optimização de processos. Normalmente os espaços industriais
possuem uma infraestrutura Wi-Fi que pode ser usada para localizar pessoas, bens ou veÃculos,
sendo uma oportunidade para aumentar a produtividade. Os mapas de rádio são importantes para os
sistemas de posicionamento baseados em Wi-Fi, porque representam o ambiente de rádio e são usados
para estimar uma posição. Os mapas de rádio são constituÃdos por amostras Wi-Fi recolhidas em posições
conhecidas e degradam-se ao longo do tempo devido a vários fatores, por exemplo, efeitos de propagação,
adição/remoção de APs, entre outros. O processo de construção do mapa de rádio costuma ser exigente
em termos de tempo e recursos humanos, constituindo um desafio considerável. Os veÃculos, que operam
em ambientes industriais podem ser explorados para auxiliar na construção de mapas de rádio, desde que
seja possÃvel localizá-los e rastreá-los. O objetivo principal desta tese é desenvolver um sistema de posicionamento
para veÃculos industriais com mapas de rádio auto-regenerativos (capaz de manter os mapas
de rádio atualizados). Os veÃculos são localizados através da fusão sensorial de Wi-Fi com sensores de
movimento, que permitem anotar novas amostras Wi-Fi para o mapa de rádio auto-regenerativo. São propostas
duas abordagens de fusão sensorial, baseadas em Loose Coupling e Tight Coupling, para a
localização dos veÃculos. A abordagem Tight Coupling inclui uma métrica de confiança para determinar
quando é que as amostras de Wi-Fi devem ser anotadas. Deste modo, esta solução não requer calibração
nem esforço humano para a construção e manutenção do mapa de rádio. Os resultados obtidos em experiências
sugerem que esta solução tem potencial para a IoT e a Indústria 4.0, especialmente em serviços
de localização, mas também na monitorização, suporte à navegação autónoma, e interconectividade.Industry 4.0 is driving change for new forms of production and real-time optimization in factories, which
benefit from the Industrial Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities to locate industrial vehicles for monitoring,
improving safety, and operations. Most industrial environments have a Wi-Fi infrastructure that can be
exploited to locate people, assets, or vehicles, providing an opportunity for enhancing productivity and
interconnectivity. Radio maps are important for Wi-Fi-based Indoor Position Systems (IPSs) since they
represent the radio environment and are used to estimate a position. Radio maps comprise a set of Wi-
Fi samples collected at known positions, and degrade over time due to several aspects, e.g., propagation
effects, addition/removal of Access Points (APs), among others, hence they should be periodically updated
to maintain the IPS performance. The process to build and maintain radio maps is usually time-consuming
and demanding in terms of human resources, thus being challenging to perform. Vehicles, commonly
present in industrial environments, can be explored to help build and maintain radio maps, as long as it
is possible to locate and track them. The main objective of this thesis is to develop an IPS for industrial
vehicles with self-healing radio maps (capable of keeping radio maps up to date). Vehicles are tracked
using sensor fusion of Wi-Fi with motion sensors, which allows to annotate new Wi-Fi samples to build the
self-healing radio maps. Two sensor fusion approaches based on Loose Coupling and Tight Coupling are
proposed to track vehicles. The Tight Coupling approach includes a reliability metric to determine when
Wi-Fi samples should be annotated. As a result, this solution does not depend on any calibration or human
effort to build and maintain the radio map. Results obtained in real-world experiments suggest that this
solution has potential for IoT and Industry 4.0, especially in location services, but also in monitoring and
analytics, supporting autonomous navigation, and interconnectivity between devices.MAP-Tele Doctoral Programme scientific committee and the FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia) for the PhD grant (PD/BD/137401/2018
DRONE DELIVERY OF CBNRECy – DEW WEAPONS Emerging Threats of Mini-Weapons of Mass Destruction and Disruption (WMDD)
Drone Delivery of CBNRECy – DEW Weapons: Emerging Threats of Mini-Weapons of Mass Destruction and Disruption (WMDD) is our sixth textbook in a series covering the world of UASs and UUVs. Our textbook takes on a whole new purview for UAS / CUAS/ UUV (drones) – how they can be used to deploy Weapons of Mass Destruction and Deception against CBRNE and civilian targets of opportunity. We are concerned with the future use of these inexpensive devices and their availability to maleficent actors. Our work suggests that UASs in air and underwater UUVs will be the future of military and civilian terrorist operations. UAS / UUVs can deliver a huge punch for a low investment and minimize human casualties.https://newprairiepress.org/ebooks/1046/thumbnail.jp
Indoor Positioning and Navigation
In recent years, rapid development in robotics, mobile, and communication technologies has encouraged many studies in the field of localization and navigation in indoor environments. An accurate localization system that can operate in an indoor environment has considerable practical value, because it can be built into autonomous mobile systems or a personal navigation system on a smartphone for guiding people through airports, shopping malls, museums and other public institutions, etc. Such a system would be particularly useful for blind people. Modern smartphones are equipped with numerous sensors (such as inertial sensors, cameras, and barometers) and communication modules (such as WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC, LTE/5G, and UWB capabilities), which enable the implementation of various localization algorithms, namely, visual localization, inertial navigation system, and radio localization. For the mapping of indoor environments and localization of autonomous mobile sysems, LIDAR sensors are also frequently used in addition to smartphone sensors. Visual localization and inertial navigation systems are sensitive to external disturbances; therefore, sensor fusion approaches can be used for the implementation of robust localization algorithms. These have to be optimized in order to be computationally efficient, which is essential for real-time processing and low energy consumption on a smartphone or robot
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