839 research outputs found
WLAN-paikannuksen elinkaaren tukeminen
The advent of GPS positioning at the turn of the millennium provided consumers with worldwide access to outdoor location information. For the purposes of indoor positioning, however, the GPS signal rarely penetrates buildings well enough to maintain the same level of positioning granularity as outdoors.
Arriving around the same time, wireless local area networks (WLAN) have gained widespread support both in terms of infrastructure deployments and client proliferation. A promising approach to bridge the location context then has been positioning based on WLAN signals. In addition to being readily available in most environments needing support for location information, the adoption of a WLAN positioning system is financially low-cost compared to dedicated infrastructure approaches, partly due to operating on an unlicensed frequency band. Furthermore, the accuracy provided by this approach is enough for a wide range of location-based services, such as navigation and location-aware advertisements.
In spite of this attractive proposition and extensive research in both academia and industry, WLAN positioning has yet to become the de facto choice for indoor positioning. This is despite over 20 000 publications and the foundation of several companies. The main reasons for this include: (i) the cost of deployment, and re-deployment, which is often significant, if not prohibitive, in terms of work hours; (ii) the complex propagation of the wireless signal, which -- through interaction with the environment -- renders it inherently stochastic; (iii) the use of an unlicensed frequency band, which means the wireless medium faces fierce competition by other technologies, and even unintentional radiators, that can impair traffic in unforeseen ways and impact positioning accuracy.
This thesis addresses these issues by developing novel solutions for reducing the effort of deployment, including optimizing the indoor location topology for the use of WLAN positioning, as well as automatically detecting sources of cross-technology interference. These contributions pave the way for WLAN positioning to become as ubiquitous as the underlying technology.GPS-paikannus avattiin julkiseen käyttöön vuosituhannen vaihteessa, jonka jälkeen sitä on voinut käyttää sijainnin paikantamiseen ulkotiloissa kaikkialla maailmassa. Sisätiloissa GPS-signaali kuitenkin harvoin läpäisee rakennuksia kyllin hyvin voidakseen tarjota vastaavaa paikannustarkkuutta.
Langattomat lähiverkot (WLAN), mukaan lukien tukiasemat ja käyttölaitteet, yleistyivät nopeasti samoihin aikoihin. Näiden verkkojen signaalien käyttö on siksi alusta asti tarjonnut lupaavia mahdollisuuksia sisätilapaikannukseen. Useimmissa ympäristöissä on jo valmiit WLAN-verkot, joten paikannuksen käyttöönotto on edullista verrattuna järjestelmiin, jotka vaativat erillisen laitteiston. Tämä johtuu osittain lisenssivapaasta taajuusalueesta, joka mahdollistaa kohtuuhintaiset päätelaitteet. WLAN-paikannuksen tarjoama tarkkuus on lisäksi riittävä monille sijaintipohjaisille palveluille, kuten suunnistamiselle ja paikkatietoisille mainoksille.
Näistä lupaavista alkuasetelmista ja laajasta tutkimuksesta huolimatta WLAN-paikannus ei ole kuitenkaan pystynyt lunastamaan paikkaansa pääasiallisena sisätilapaikannusmenetelmänä. Vaivannäöstä ei ole puutetta; vuosien saatossa on julkaistu yli 20 000 tieteellistä artikkelia sekä perustettu useita yrityksiä. Syitä tähän kehitykseen on useita. Ensinnäkin, paikannuksen pystyttäminen ja ylläpito vaativat aikaa ja vaivaa. Toiseksi, langattoman signaalin eteneminen ja vuorovaikutus ympäristön kanssa on hyvin monimutkaista, mikä tekee mallintamisesta vaikeaa. Kolmanneksi, eri teknologiat ja laitteet kilpailevat lisenssivapaan taajuusalueen käytöstä, mikä johtaa satunnaisiin paikannustarkkuuteen vaikuttaviin tietoliikennehäiriöihin.
Väitöskirja esittelee uusia menetelmiä joilla voidaan merkittävästi pienentää paikannusjärjestelmän asennuskustannuksia, jakaa ympäristö automaattisesti osiin WLAN-paikannusta varten, sekä tunnistaa mahdolliset langattomat häiriölähteet. Nämä kehitysaskeleet edesauttavat WLAN-paikannuksen yleistymistä jokapäiväiseen käyttöön
Space-partitioning with cascade-connected ANN structures for positioning in mobile communication systems
The world around us is getting more connected with each day passing by – new portable
devices employing wireless connections to various networks wherever one might be. Locationaware
computing has become an important bit of telecommunication services and industry. For
this reason, the research efforts on new and improved localisation algorithms are constantly
being performed. Thus far, the satellite positioning systems have achieved highest popularity
and penetration regarding the global position estimation. In spite the numerous investigations
aimed at enabling these systems to equally procure the position in both indoor and outdoor
environments, this is still a task to be completed.
This research work presented herein aimed at improving the state-of-the-art positioning
techniques through the use of two highly popular mobile communication systems: WLAN and
public land mobile networks. These systems already have widely deployed network structures
(coverage) and a vast number of (inexpensive) mobile clients, so using them for additional,
positioning purposes is rational and logical.
First, the positioning in WLAN systems was analysed and elaborated. The indoor test-bed,
used for verifying the models’ performances, covered almost 10,000m2 area. It has been chosen
carefully so that the positioning could be thoroughly explored. The measurement campaigns
performed therein covered the whole of test-bed environment and gave insight into location
dependent parameters available in WLAN networks. Further analysis of the data lead to
developing of positioning models based on ANNs.
The best single ANN model obtained 9.26m average distance error and 7.75m median distance
error. The novel positioning model structure, consisting of cascade-connected ANNs, improved
those results to 8.14m and 4.57m, respectively. To adequately compare the proposed
techniques with other, well-known research techniques, the environment positioning error
parameter was introduced. This parameter enables to take the size of the test environment into
account when comparing the accuracy of the indoor positioning techniques.
Concerning the PLMN positioning, in-depth analysis of available system parameters and
signalling protocols produced a positioning algorithm, capable of fusing the system received
signal strength parameters received from multiple systems and multiple operators. Knowing
that most of the areas are covered by signals from more than one network operator and even
more than one system from one operator, it becomes easy to note the great practical value of
this novel algorithm. On the other hand, an extensive drive-test measurement campaign,
covering more than 600km in the central areas of Belgrade, was performed. Using this algorithm and applying the single ANN models to the recorded measurements, a 59m average
distance error and 50m median distance error were obtained. Moreover, the positioning in
indoor environment was verified and the degradation of performances, due to the crossenvironment
model use, was reported: 105m average distance error and 101m median distance
error.
When applying the new, cascade-connected ANN structure model, distance errors were
reduced to 26m and 2m, for the average and median distance errors, respectively.
The obtained positioning accuracy was shown to be good enough for the implementation of a
broad scope of location based services by using the existing and deployed, commonly
available, infrastructure
Human Crowdsourcing Data for Indoor Location Applied to Ambient Assisted Living Scenarios
In the last decades, the rise of life expectancy has accelerated the demand for new technological
solutions to provide a longer life with improved quality. One of the major areas
of the Ambient Assisted Living aims to monitor the elderly location indoors. For this purpose,
indoor positioning systems are valuable tools and can be classified depending on the
need of a supporting infrastructure. Infrastructure-based systems require the investment
on expensive equipment and existing infrastructure-free systems, although rely on the
pervasively available characteristics of the buildings, present some limitations regarding
the extensive process of acquiring and maintaining fingerprints, the maps that store the
environmental characteristics to be used in the localisation phase. These problems hinder
indoor positioning systems to be deployed in most scenarios.
To overcome these limitations, an algorithm for the automatic construction of indoor
floor plans and environmental fingerprints is proposed. With the use of crowdsourcing
techniques, where the extensiveness of a task is reduced with the help of a large undefined
group of users, the algorithm relies on the combination ofmultiple sources of information,
collected in a non-annotated way by common smartphones. The crowdsourced data is
composed by inertial sensors, responsible for estimating the users’ trajectories, Wi-Fi
radio and magnetic field signals. Wi-Fi radio data is used to cluster the trajectories into
smaller groups, each corresponding to specific areas of the building. Distance metrics
applied to magnetic field signals are used to identify geomagnetic similarities between
different users’ trajectories. The building’s floor plan is then automatically created, which
results in fingerprints labelled with physical locations.
Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm achieved comparable floor
plan and fingerprints to those acquired manually, allowing the conclusion that is possible
to automate the setup process of infrastructure-free systems. With these results, this
solution can be applied in any fingerprinting-based indoor positioning system
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Distributed localisation algorithm for wireless ad hoc networks of moving nodes
Existing ad hoc network localisation solutions rely either on external location references or network-wide exchange of information and centralised processing and computation of location estimates. Without these, nodes are not able to estimate the relative locations of other nodes within their communication range. This thesis defines a new distributed localisation algorithm for ad hoc networks of moving nodes. The Relative Neighbour Localisation (RNL) algorithm works without any external localisation signal or systems and does not assume centralised information processing. The idea behind the location estimates produced by the RNL algorithm is the relationship between the relative locations of two nodes, their mobility parameters and the signal strengths measured between them. The proposed algorithm makes use of the data available to each node to produce a location estimate. The signal strength each node is capable of measuring is used as one algorithm input. The other input is the velocity vector of the neighbouring node, composed of its speed and direction of movement, which each node is assumed to periodically broadcast. The relationship between the signal strength and the mobility parameters on one, and the relative location on the other side can be analytically formulated in an ideal case. The limitations of a realistic scenario complicate this relationship, making it very difficult to formulate analytically. An empirical approach is thus used. The angle and the distance estimates are individually computed, together forming a two-dimensional location estimate. The performance of the algorithm was analysed in detail using simulation, showing a median estimate error of under 10m, and its application was tested through design and evaluation of a distributed sensing coverage algorithm, showing RNL location estimates can provide 90% of the coverage achievable with true locations being known
Fingerprint location methods using ray-tracing
Mobile location methods that employ signal fingerprints are becoming increasingly popular in a number of wireless positioning solutions. A fingerprint is a spatial database, created either by recorded measurement or simulation, of the radio environment. It is used to assign signal characteristics such as received signal strength or power delay profiles to an actual location. Measurements made by either the handset or the network, are then matched to those in the fingerprint in order to determine a location. Creation of the fingerprint by an a priori measurement stage is costly and time consuming. Virtual fingerprints, those created by a ray-tracing radio propagation prediction tool, normally require a lengthy off-line simulation mode that needs to be repeated each time changes are made to the network or built environment. An open research question exists of whether a virtual fingerprint could be created dynamically via a ray-trace model embedded on a mobile handset for positioning purposes.
The key aim of this thesis is to investigate the trade-off between complexity of the physics required for ray-tracing models and the accuracy of the virtual fingerprints they produce. The most demanding computational phase of a ray-trace simulation is the ray-path finding stage, whereby a distribution of rays cast from a source point, interacting with walls and edges by reflection and diffraction phenomena are traced to a set of receive points. Due to this, we specifically develop a new technique that decreases the computation of the ray-path finding stage. The new technique utilises a modified method of images rather than brute-force ray casting. It leads to the creation of virtual fingerprints requiring significantly less computation effort relative to ray casting techniques, with only small decreases in accuracy.
Our new technique for virtual fingerprint creation was then applied to the development of a signal strength fingerprint for a 3G UMTS network covering the Sydney central business district. Our main goal was to determine whether on current mobile handsets, a sub-50m location accuracy could be achieved within a few seconds timescale using our system. The results show that this was in fact achievable. We also show how virtual fingerprinting can lead to more accurate solutions. Based on these results we claim user embedded fingerprinting is now a viable alternative to a priori measurement schemes
A Review of Indoor Millimeter Wave Device-based Localization and Device-free Sensing Technologies and Applications
The commercial availability of low-cost millimeter wave (mmWave)
communication and radar devices is starting to improve the penetration of such
technologies in consumer markets, paving the way for large-scale and dense
deployments in fifth-generation (5G)-and-beyond as well as 6G networks. At the
same time, pervasive mmWave access will enable device localization and
device-free sensing with unprecedented accuracy, especially with respect to
sub-6 GHz commercial-grade devices. This paper surveys the state of the art in
device-based localization and device-free sensing using mmWave communication
and radar devices, with a focus on indoor deployments. We first overview key
concepts about mmWave signal propagation and system design. Then, we provide a
detailed account of approaches and algorithms for localization and sensing
enabled by mmWaves. We consider several dimensions in our analysis, including
the main objectives, techniques, and performance of each work, whether each
research reached some degree of implementation, and which hardware platforms
were used for this purpose. We conclude by discussing that better algorithms
for consumer-grade devices, data fusion methods for dense deployments, as well
as an educated application of machine learning methods are promising, relevant
and timely research directions.Comment: 43 pages, 13 figures. Accepted in IEEE Communications Surveys &
Tutorials (IEEE COMST
A survey of deep learning approaches for WiFi-based indoor positioning
One of the most popular approaches for indoor positioning is WiFi fingerprinting, which has been intrinsically tackled as a traditional machine learning problem since the beginning, to achieve a few metres of accuracy on average. In recent years, deep learning has emerged as an alternative approach, with a large number of publications reporting sub-metre positioning accuracy. Therefore, this survey presents a timely, comprehensive review of the most interesting deep learning methods being used for WiFi fingerprinting. In doing so, we aim to identify the most efficient neural networks, under a variety of positioning evaluation metrics for different readers. We will demonstrate that despite the new emerging WiFi signal measures (i.e. CSI and RTT), RSS produces competitive performances under deep learning. We will also show that simple neural networks outperform more complex ones in certain environments
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