Sensors

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26 pages, 12631 KiB

Open AccessArticle

CC-DTW: An Accurate Indoor Fingerprinting Localization Using Calibrated Channel State Information and Modified Dynamic Time Warping

by Zhongliang Deng, Xiao Fu, Qianqian Cheng, Lingjie Shi and Wen Liu

Sensors 2019, 19(9), 1984; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19091984 - 28 Apr 2019

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 3884

Abstract

Indoor wireless local area network (WLAN) based positioning technologies have boomed recently because of the huge demands of indoor location-based services (ILBS) and the wide deployment of commercial Wi-Fi devices. Channel state information (CSI) extracted from Wi-Fi signals could be calibrated and utilized [...] Read more.

Indoor wireless local area network (WLAN) based positioning technologies have boomed recently because of the huge demands of indoor location-based services (ILBS) and the wide deployment of commercial Wi-Fi devices. Channel state information (CSI) extracted from Wi-Fi signals could be calibrated and utilized as a fine-grained positioning feature for indoor fingerprinting localization. One of the main factors that would restrict the positioning accuracy of fingerprinting systems is the spatial resolution of fingerprints (SRF). This paper mainly focuses on the improvement of SRF for indoor CSI-based positioning and a calibrated CSI feature (CCF) with high SRF is established based on the preprocess of both measured amplitude and phase. In addition, a similarity calculation metric for the proposed CCF is designed based on modified dynamic time warping (MDTW). An indoor fingerprinting method based on CCF and MDTW, named CC-DTW, is then proposed to improve the positioning accuracy in indoors. Experiments are conducted in two indoor office testbeds, and the performances of the proposed CC-DTW, one time-reversal (TR) based approach and one Euclidean distance (ED) based approach are evaluated and discussed. The results show that the SRF of CC-DTW outperforms the TR-based one and the ED-based one in both two testbeds in terms of the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve metric, and the area under curve (AUC) metric. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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18 pages, 5017 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Steering Angle Assisted Vehicular Navigation Using Portable Devices in GNSS-Denied Environments

by Mohamed Moussa, Adel Moussa and Naser El-Sheimy

Sensors 2019, 19(7), 1618; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19071618 - 4 Apr 2019

Cited by 19 | Viewed by 6904

Abstract

Recently, land vehicle navigation, and especially by the use of low-cost sensors, has been the object of a huge level of research interest. Consumer Portable Devices (CPDs) such as tablets and smartphones are being widely used by many consumers all over the world. [...] Read more.

Recently, land vehicle navigation, and especially by the use of low-cost sensors, has been the object of a huge level of research interest. Consumer Portable Devices (CPDs) such as tablets and smartphones are being widely used by many consumers all over the world. CPDs contain sensors (accelerometers, gyroscopes, magnetometer, etc.) that can be used for many land vehicle applications such as navigation. This paper presents a novel approach for estimating steering wheel angles using CPD accelerometers by attaching CPDs to the steering wheel. The land vehicle change of heading is then computed from the estimated steering wheel angle. The calculated change of heading is used to update the navigation filter to aid the onboard Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) through the use of an Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) in GNSS-denied environments. Four main factors that may affect the steering wheel angle accuracy are considered and modeled during steering angle estimations: static onboard IMU leveling, inclination angle of the steering wheel, vehicle acceleration, and vehicle inclination. In addition, these factors are assessed for their effects on the final result. Therefore, three methods are proposed for steering angle estimation: non-compensated, partially-compensated, and fully-compensated methods. A road experimental test was carried out using a Pixhawk (PX4) navigation system, iPad Air, and the OBD-II interface. The average Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of the change of heading estimated by the proposed method was 0.033 rad/s. A navigation solution was estimated while changes of heading and forward velocity updates were used to aid the IMU during different GNSS signal outages. The estimated navigation solution is enhanced when applying the proposed updates to the navigation filter by 91% and 97% for 60 s and 120 s of GNSS signal outage, respectively, compared to the IMU standalone solution. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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20 pages, 4868 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Wi-Fi-Based Effortless Indoor Positioning System Using IoT Sensors

by Muhammad Usman Ali, Soojung Hur and Yongwan Park

Sensors 2019, 19(7), 1496; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19071496 - 27 Mar 2019

Cited by 34 | Viewed by 6746

Abstract

Wi-Fi positioning based on fingerprinting has been considered as the most widely used technology in the field of indoor positioning. The fingerprinting database has been used as an essential part of the Wi-Fi positioning system. However, the offline phase of the calibration involves [...] Read more.

Wi-Fi positioning based on fingerprinting has been considered as the most widely used technology in the field of indoor positioning. The fingerprinting database has been used as an essential part of the Wi-Fi positioning system. However, the offline phase of the calibration involves a laborious task of site analysis which involves costs and a waste of time. We offer an indoor positioning system based on the automatic generation of radio maps of the indoor environment. The proposed system does not require any effort and uses Wi-Fi compatible Internet-of-Things (IoT) sensors. Propagation loss parameters are automatically estimated from the online feedback of deployed sensors and the radio maps are updated periodically without any physical intervention. The proposed system leverages the raster maps of an environment with the wall information only, against computationally extensive techniques based on vector maps that require precise information on the length and angles of each wall. Experimental results show that the proposed system has achieved an average accuracy of 2 m, which is comparable to the survey-based Wi-Fi fingerprinting technique. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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22 pages, 39270 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Easily-Deployable Acoustic Local Positioning System Based on Auto-Calibrated Wireless Beacons

by José A. Moreno, Fernando J. Álvarez, Teodoro Aguilera and José A. Paredes

Sensors 2019, 19(6), 1385; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19061385 - 20 Mar 2019

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 5634

Abstract

Self-calibrated Acoustic Local Positioning Systems (ALPS) generally require a high consumption of hardware and software resources to obtain the user’s position at an acceptable update rate. To address this limitation, this work proposes a self-calibrated ALPS based on a software/hardware co-design approach. This [...] Read more.

Self-calibrated Acoustic Local Positioning Systems (ALPS) generally require a high consumption of hardware and software resources to obtain the user’s position at an acceptable update rate. To address this limitation, this work proposes a self-calibrated ALPS based on a software/hardware co-design approach. This working architecture allows for efficient communications, signal processing tasks, and the running of the positioning algorithm on low-cost devices. This fact also enables the real-time system operation. The proposed system is composed of a minimum of four RF-synchronized active acoustic beacons, which emit spread-spectrum modulated signals to position an unlimited number of receiver nodes. Each receiver node estimates the beacons’ position by means of an auto-calibration process and then computes its own position by means of a 3D multilateration algorithm. A set of experimental tests has been carried out where the feasibility of the proposed system is demonstrated. In these experiments, accuracies below 0.1 m are obtained in the determination of the receptor node position with respect to the set of previously-calibrated beacons. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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16 pages, 1892 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A First-Order Differential Data Processing Method for Accuracy Improvement of Complementary Filtering in Micro-UAV Attitude Estimation

by Xudong Wen, Chunwu Liu, Zhiping Huang, Shaojing Su, Xiaojun Guo, Zhen Zuo and Hao Qu

Sensors 2019, 19(6), 1340; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19061340 - 18 Mar 2019

Cited by 14 | Viewed by 3502

Abstract

There are many algorithms that can be used to fuse sensor data. The complementary filtering algorithm has low computational complexity and good real-time performance characteristics. It is very suitable for attitude estimation of small unmanned aerial vehicles (micro-UAVs) equipped with low-cost inertial measurement [...] Read more.

There are many algorithms that can be used to fuse sensor data. The complementary filtering algorithm has low computational complexity and good real-time performance characteristics. It is very suitable for attitude estimation of small unmanned aerial vehicles (micro-UAVs) equipped with low-cost inertial measurement units (IMUs). However, its low attitude estimation accuracy severely limits its applications. Though, many methods have been proposed by researchers to improve attitude estimation accuracy of complementary filtering algorithms, there are few studies that aim to improve it from the data processing aspect. In this paper, a real-time first-order differential data processing algorithm is proposed for gyroscope data, and an adaptive adjustment strategy is designed for the parameters in the algorithm. Besides, the differential-nonlinear complementary filtering (D-NCF) algorithm is proposed by combine the first-order differential data processing algorithm with the basic nonlinear complementary filtering (NCF) algorithm. The experimental results show that the first-order differential data processing algorithm can effectively correct the gyroscope data, and the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of attitude estimation of the D-NCF algorithm is smaller than when the NCF algorithm is used. The RMSE of the roll angle decreases from 1.1653 to 0.5093, that of the pitch angle decreases from 2.9638 to 1.5542, and that of the yaw angle decreases from 0.9398 to 0.6827. In general, the attitude estimation accuracy of D-NCF algorithm is higher than that of the NCF algorithm. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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19 pages, 862 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Gravity-Based Methods for Heading Computation in Pedestrian Dead Reckoning

by Adi Manos, Itzik Klein and Tamir Hazan

Sensors 2019, 19(5), 1170; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19051170 - 7 Mar 2019

Cited by 31 | Viewed by 4318

Abstract

One of the common ways for solving indoor navigation is known as Pedestrian Dead Reckoning (PDR), which employs inertial and magnetic sensors typically embedded in a smartphone carried by a user. Estimation of the pedestrian’s heading is a crucial step in PDR algorithms, [...] Read more.

One of the common ways for solving indoor navigation is known as Pedestrian Dead Reckoning (PDR), which employs inertial and magnetic sensors typically embedded in a smartphone carried by a user. Estimation of the pedestrian’s heading is a crucial step in PDR algorithms, since it is a dominant factor in the positioning accuracy. In this paper, rather than assuming the device to be fixed in a certain orientation on the pedestrian, we focus on estimating the vertical direction in the sensor frame of an unconstrained smartphone. To that end, we establish a framework for gravity direction estimation and highlight the important role it has for solving the heading in the horizontal plane. Furthermore, we provide detailed derivation of several approaches for calculating the heading angle, based on either the gyroscope or the magnetic sensor, all of which employ the estimated vertical direction. These various methods—both for gravity direction and for heading estimation—are demonstrated, analyzed and compared using data recorded from field experiments with commercial smartphones. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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23 pages, 1936 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

A Deep Learning Approach to Position Estimation from Channel Impulse Responses

by Arne Niitsoo, Thorsten Edelhäußer, Ernst Eberlein, Niels Hadaschik and Christopher Mutschler

Sensors 2019, 19(5), 1064; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19051064 - 2 Mar 2019

Cited by 49 | Viewed by 9262

Abstract

Radio-based locating systems allow for a robust and continuous tracking in industrial environments and are a key enabler for the digitalization of processes in many areas such as production, manufacturing, and warehouse management. Time difference of arrival (TDoA) systems estimate the time-of-flight (ToF) [...] Read more.

Radio-based locating systems allow for a robust and continuous tracking in industrial environments and are a key enabler for the digitalization of processes in many areas such as production, manufacturing, and warehouse management. Time difference of arrival (TDoA) systems estimate the time-of-flight (ToF) of radio burst signals with a set of synchronized antennas from which they trilaterate accurate position estimates of mobile tags. However, in industrial environments where multipath propagation is predominant it is difficult to extract the correct ToF of the signal. This article shows how deep learning (DL) can be used to estimate the position of mobile objects directly from the raw channel impulse responses (CIR) extracted at the receivers. Our experiments show that our DL-based position estimation not only works well under harsh multipath propagation but also outperforms state-of-the-art approaches in line-of-sight situations. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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23 pages, 19373 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Indoor Visible Light Positioning: Overcoming the Practical Limitations of the Quadrant Angular Diversity Aperture Receiver (QADA) by Using the Two-Stage QADA-Plus Receiver

by Stefanie Cincotta, Cuiwei He, Adrian Neild and Jean Armstrong

Sensors 2019, 19(4), 956; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19040956 - 24 Feb 2019

Cited by 32 | Viewed by 4686

Abstract

Visible light positioning (VLP), using LED luminaires as beacons, is a promising solution to the growing demand for accurate indoor positioning. In this paper, we introduce a two-stage receiver that has been specifically designed for VLP. This receiver exploits the advantages of two [...] Read more.

Visible light positioning (VLP), using LED luminaires as beacons, is a promising solution to the growing demand for accurate indoor positioning. In this paper, we introduce a two-stage receiver that has been specifically designed for VLP. This receiver exploits the advantages of two different VLP receiver types: photodiodes and imaging sensors. In this new receiver design a quadrant angular diversity aperture (QADA) receiver is combined with an off-the-shelf camera to form a robust new receiver called QADA-plus. Results are presented for QADA that show the impact of noise and luminaire geometry on angle of arrival estimation accuracy and positioning accuracy. Detailed discussions highlight other potential sources of error for the QADA receiver and explain how the two-stage QADA-plus can overcome these issues. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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18 pages, 16492 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Solving Monocular Visual Odometry Scale Factor with Adaptive Step Length Estimates for Pedestrians Using Handheld Devices

by Nicolas Antigny, Hideaki Uchiyama, Myriam Servières, Valérie Renaudin, Diego Thomas and Rin-ichiro Taniguchi

Sensors 2019, 19(4), 953; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19040953 - 23 Feb 2019

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 6160

Abstract

The urban environments represent challenging areas for handheld device pose estimation (i.e., 3D position and 3D orientation) in large displacements. It is even more challenging with low-cost sensors and computational resources that are available in pedestrian mobile devices (i.e., monocular camera and Inertial [...] Read more.

The urban environments represent challenging areas for handheld device pose estimation (i.e., 3D position and 3D orientation) in large displacements. It is even more challenging with low-cost sensors and computational resources that are available in pedestrian mobile devices (i.e., monocular camera and Inertial Measurement Unit). To address these challenges, we propose a continuous pose estimation based on monocular Visual Odometry. To solve the scale ambiguity and suppress the scale drift, an adaptive pedestrian step lengths estimation is used for the displacements on the horizontal plane. To complete the estimation, a handheld equipment height model, with respect to the Digital Terrain Model contained in Geographical Information Systems, is used for the displacement on the vertical axis. In addition, an accurate pose estimation based on the recognition of known objects is punctually used to correct the pose estimate and reset the monocular Visual Odometry. To validate the benefit of our framework, experimental data have been collected on a 0.7 km pedestrian path in an urban environment for various people. Thus, the proposed solution allows to achieve a positioning error of 1.6–7.5% of the walked distance, and confirms the benefit of the use of an adaptive step length compared to the use of a fixed-step length. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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22 pages, 1798 KiB

Open AccessArticle

An Approach to Robust INS/UWB Integrated Positioning for Autonomous Indoor Mobile Robots

by Jianfeng Liu, Jiexin Pu, Lifan Sun and Zishu He

Sensors 2019, 19(4), 950; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19040950 - 23 Feb 2019

Cited by 51 | Viewed by 5654

Abstract

The key to successful positioning of autonomous mobile robots in complicated indoor environments lies in the strong anti-interference of the positioning system and accurate measurements from sensors. Inertial navigation systems (INS) are widely used for indoor mobile robots because they are not susceptible [...] Read more.

The key to successful positioning of autonomous mobile robots in complicated indoor environments lies in the strong anti-interference of the positioning system and accurate measurements from sensors. Inertial navigation systems (INS) are widely used for indoor mobile robots because they are not susceptible to external interferences and work properly, but the positioning errors may be accumulated over time. Thus ultra wideband (UWB) is usually adopted to compensate the accumulated errors due to its high ranging precision. Unfortunately, UWB is easily affected by the multipath effects and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) factor in complex indoor environments, which may degrade the positioning performance. To solve above problems, this paper proposes an effective system framework of INS/UWB integrated positioning for autonomous indoor mobile robots, in which our modeling approach is simple to implement and a Sage–Husa fuzzy adaptive filter (SHFAF) is proposed. Due to the favorable property (i.e., self-adaptive adjustment) of SHFAF, the difficult problem of time-varying noise in complex indoor environments is considered and solved explicitly. Moreover, outliers can be detected and corrected by the proposed sliding window estimation with fading coefficients. This facilitates the positioning performance improvement for indoor mobile robots. The benefits of what we propose are illustrated by not only simulations but more importantly experimental results. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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30 pages, 46055 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Characterization of Multipath Effects in Indoor Positioning Systems by AoA and PoA Based on Optical Signals

by Álvaro De-La-Llana-Calvo, José-Luis Lázaro-Galilea, Alfredo Gardel-Vicente, David Rodríguez-Navarro, Ignacio Bravo-Muñoz and Felipe Espinosa-Zapata

Sensors 2019, 19(4), 917; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19040917 - 21 Feb 2019

Cited by 24 | Viewed by 4545

Abstract

In this paper, we characterize and measure the effects of the errors introduced by the multipath when obtaining the position of an agent by means of Indoor Positioning Systems (IPS) based on optical signal. These effects are characterized in Local Positioning Systems (LPSs) [...] Read more.

In this paper, we characterize and measure the effects of the errors introduced by the multipath when obtaining the position of an agent by means of Indoor Positioning Systems (IPS) based on optical signal. These effects are characterized in Local Positioning Systems (LPSs) based on two different techniques: the first one by determining the Angle of Arrival (AoA) of the infrared signal (IR) to the detector; and the second one by working with the measurement of the Phase shift of signal Arrival from the transmitter to a receiver (PoA). We present the obtained results and conclusions, which indicate that using Position Sensitive Devices (PSD) the multipath effects for AoA have little impact on the measurement, while for PoA the positioning errors are very significant, making the system useless in many cases. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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16 pages, 4808 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Improving AoA Localization Accuracy in Wireless Acoustic Sensor Networks with Angular Probability Density Functions

by Bart Thoen, Stijn Wielandt and Lieven De Strycker

Sensors 2019, 19(4), 900; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19040900 - 21 Feb 2019

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 3555

Abstract

Advances in energy efficient electronic components create new opportunities for wireless acoustic sensor networks. Such sensors can be deployed to localize unwanted and unexpected sound events in surveillance applications, home assisted living, etc. This research focused on a wireless acoustic sensor network with [...] Read more.

Advances in energy efficient electronic components create new opportunities for wireless acoustic sensor networks. Such sensors can be deployed to localize unwanted and unexpected sound events in surveillance applications, home assisted living, etc. This research focused on a wireless acoustic sensor network with low-profile low-power linear MEMS microphone arrays, enabling the retrieval of angular information of sound events. The angular information was wirelessly transmitted to a central server, which estimated the location of the sound event. Common angle-of-arrival localization approaches use triangulation, however this article presents a way of using angular probability density functions combined with a matching algorithm to localize sound events. First, two computationally efficient delay-based angle-of-arrival calculation methods were investigated. The matching algorithm is described and compared to a common triangulation approach. The two localization algorithms were experimentally evaluated in a

4.25

m by

9.20

m room, localizing white noise and vocal sounds. The results demonstrate the superior accuracy of the proposed matching algorithm over a common triangulation approach. When localizing a white noise source, an accuracy improvement of up to 114% was achieved. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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23 pages, 5999 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Fast Indoor/Outdoor Transition Detection Algorithm Based on Machine Learning

by Yida Zhu, Haiyong Luo, Qu Wang, Fang Zhao, Bokun Ning, Qixue Ke and Chen Zhang

Sensors 2019, 19(4), 786; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19040786 - 14 Feb 2019

Cited by 47 | Viewed by 5998

Abstract

The widespread popularity of smartphones makes it possible to provide Location-Based Services (LBS) in a variety of complex scenarios. The location and contextual status, especially the Indoor/Outdoor switching, provides a direct indicator for seamless indoor and outdoor positioning and navigation. It is challenging [...] Read more.

The widespread popularity of smartphones makes it possible to provide Location-Based Services (LBS) in a variety of complex scenarios. The location and contextual status, especially the Indoor/Outdoor switching, provides a direct indicator for seamless indoor and outdoor positioning and navigation. It is challenging to quickly detect indoor and outdoor transitions with high confidence due to a variety of signal variations in complex scenarios and the similarity of indoor and outdoor signal sources in the IO transition regions. In this paper, we consider the challenge of switching quickly in IO transition regions with high detection accuracy in complex scenarios. Towards this end, we analyze and extract spatial geometry distribution, time sequence and statistical features under different sliding windows from GNSS measurements in Android smartphones and present a novel IO detection method employing an ensemble model based on stacking and filtering the detection result by Hidden Markov Model. We evaluated our algorithm on four datasets. The results showed that our proposed algorithm was capable of identifying IO state with 99.11% accuracy in indoor and outdoor environment where we have collected data and 97.02% accuracy in new indoor and outdoor scenarios. Furthermore, in the scenario of indoor and outdoor transition where we have collected data, the recognition accuracy reaches 94.53% and the probability of switching delay within 3 s exceeds 80%. In the new scenario, the recognition accuracy reaches 92.80% and the probability of switching delay within 4 s exceeds 80%. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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29 pages, 6659 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Off-Site Indoor Localization Competitions Based on Measured Data in a Warehouse

by Ryosuke Ichikari, Katsuhiko Kaji, Ryo Shimomura, Masakatsu Kourogi, Takashi Okuma and Takeshi Kurata

Sensors 2019, 19(4), 763; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19040763 - 13 Feb 2019

Cited by 13 | Viewed by 4234

Abstract

The performance of indoor localization methods is highly dependent on the situations in which they are used. Various competitions on indoor localization have been held for fairly comparing the existing indoor localization methods in shared and controlled testing environments. However, it is difficult [...] Read more.

The performance of indoor localization methods is highly dependent on the situations in which they are used. Various competitions on indoor localization have been held for fairly comparing the existing indoor localization methods in shared and controlled testing environments. However, it is difficult to evaluate the practical performance in industrial scenarios through the existing competitions. This paper introduces two indoor localization competitions, which are named the “PDR Challenge in Warehouse Picking 2017” and “xDR Challenge for Warehouse Operations 2018” for tracking workers and vehicles in a warehouse scenario. For the PDR Challenge in Warehouse Picking 2017, we conducted a unique competition based on the data measured during the actual picking operation in an actual warehouse. We term the dead-reckoning of a vehicle as vehicle dead-reckoning (VDR), and the term “xDR” is derived from pedestrian dead-reckoning (PDR) plus VDR. As a sequel competition of the PDR Challenge in Warehouse Picking 2017, the xDR Challenge for Warehouse Operations 2018 was conducted as the world’s first competition that deals with tracking forklifts by VDR with smartphones. In the paper, first, we briefly summarize the existing competitions, and clarify the characteristics of our competitions by comparing them with other competitions. Our competitions have the unique capability of evaluating the practical performance in a warehouse by using the actual measured data as the test data and applying multi-faceted evaluation metrics. As a result, we successfully organize the competitions due to the many participants from many countries. As a conclusion of the paper, we summarize the findings of the competitions. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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17 pages, 1897 KiB

Open AccessArticle

An Unsupervised Learning Technique to Optimize Radio Maps for Indoor Localization

by Jens Trogh, Wout Joseph, Luc Martens and David Plets

Sensors 2019, 19(4), 752; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19040752 - 13 Feb 2019

Cited by 18 | Viewed by 3594

Abstract

A major burden of signal strength-based fingerprinting for indoor positioning is the generation and maintenance of a radio map, also known as a fingerprint database. Model-based radio maps are generated much faster than measurement-based radio maps but are generally not accurate enough. This [...] Read more.

A major burden of signal strength-based fingerprinting for indoor positioning is the generation and maintenance of a radio map, also known as a fingerprint database. Model-based radio maps are generated much faster than measurement-based radio maps but are generally not accurate enough. This work proposes a method to automatically construct and optimize a model-based radio map. The method is based on unsupervised learning, where random walks, for which the ground truth locations are unknown, serve as input for the optimization, along with a floor plan and a location tracking algorithm. No measurement campaign or site survey, which are labor-intensive and time-consuming, or inertial sensor measurements, which are often not available and consume additional power, are needed for this approach. Experiments in a large office building, covering over 1100 m², resulted in median accuracies of up to 2.07 m, or a relative improvement of 28.6% with only 15 min of unlabeled training data. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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19 pages, 3401 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Fast Radio Map Construction by using Adaptive Path Loss Model Interpolation in Large-Scale Building

by Jingxue Bi, Yunjia Wang, Zengke Li, Shenglei Xu, Jiapeng Zhou, Meng Sun and Minghao Si

Sensors 2019, 19(3), 712; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19030712 - 10 Feb 2019

Cited by 50 | Viewed by 4721

Abstract

The radio map construction is usually time-consuming and labor-sensitive in indoor fingerprinting localization. We propose a fast construction method by using an adaptive path loss model interpolation. Received signal strength (RSS) fingerprints are collected at sparse reference points by using multiple smartphones based [...] Read more.

The radio map construction is usually time-consuming and labor-sensitive in indoor fingerprinting localization. We propose a fast construction method by using an adaptive path loss model interpolation. Received signal strength (RSS) fingerprints are collected at sparse reference points by using multiple smartphones based on crowdsourcing. Then, the path loss model of an access point (AP) can be built with several reference points by the least squares method in a small area. Afterwards, the RSS value can be calculated based on the constructed model and corresponding AP’s location. In the small area, all models of detectable APs can be built. The corresponding RSS values can be estimated at each interpolated point for forming the interpolated fingerprints considering RSS loss, RSS noise and RSS threshold. Through combining all interpolated and sparse reference fingerprints, the radio map of the whole area can be obtained. Experiments are conducted in corridors with a length of 211 m. To evaluate the performance of RSS estimation and positioning accuracy, inverse distance weighted and Kriging interpolation methods are introduced for comparing with the proposed method. Experimental results show that our proposed method can achieve the same positioning accuracy as complete manual radio map even with the interval of 9.6 m, reducing 85% efforts and time of construction. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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17 pages, 3771 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

Calibration of Beacons for Indoor Environments based on a Digital Map and Heuristic Information

by David Gualda, Jesús Ureña, José Alcalá and Carlos Santos

Sensors 2019, 19(3), 670; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19030670 - 6 Feb 2019

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3560

Abstract

This paper proposes an algorithm for calibrating the position of beacons which are placed on the ceiling of an indoor environment. In this context, the term calibration is used to estimate the position coordinates of a beacon related to a known reference system [...] Read more.

This paper proposes an algorithm for calibrating the position of beacons which are placed on the ceiling of an indoor environment. In this context, the term calibration is used to estimate the position coordinates of a beacon related to a known reference system in a map. The positions of a set of beacons are used for indoor positioning purposes. The operation of the beacons can be based on different technologies such as radiofrequency (RF), infrared (IR) or ultrasound (US), among others. In this case we are interested in the positions of several beacons that compose an Ultrasonic Local Positioning System (ULPS) placed on different strategic points of the building. The calibration proposal uses several distances from a beacon to the neighbor walls measured by a laser meter. These measured distances, the map of the building in a vector format and other heuristic data (such as the region in which the beacon is located, the approximate orientation of the distance measurements to the walls and the equations in the map coordinate system of the line defining these walls) are the inputs of the proposed algorithm. The output is the best estimation of the position of the beacon. The process is repeated for all the beacons. To find the best estimation of the position of the beacons we have implemented a numerical minimization based on the use of a Genetic Algorithm (GA) and a Harmony Search (HS) methods. The proposal has been validated with simulations and real experiments, obtaining the positions of the beacons and an estimation of the error associated that depends on which walls (and the angle of incidence of the laser) are selected to make the distance measurements. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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25 pages, 8478 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Global Monocular Indoor Positioning of a Robotic Vehicle with a Floorplan

by John Noonan, Hector Rotstein, Amir Geva and Ehud Rivlin

Sensors 2019, 19(3), 634; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19030634 - 2 Feb 2019

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3461

Abstract

This paper presents a global monocular indoor positioning system for a robotic vehicle starting from a known pose. The proposed system does not depend on a dense 3D map, require prior environment exploration or installation, or rely on the scene remaining the same, [...] Read more.

This paper presents a global monocular indoor positioning system for a robotic vehicle starting from a known pose. The proposed system does not depend on a dense 3D map, require prior environment exploration or installation, or rely on the scene remaining the same, photometrically or geometrically. The approach presents a new way of providing global positioning relying on the sparse knowledge of the building floorplan by utilizing special algorithms to resolve the unknown scale through wall–plane association. This Wall Plane Fusion algorithm presented finds correspondences between walls of the floorplan and planar structures present in the 3D point cloud. In order to extract planes from point clouds that contain scale ambiguity, the Scale Invariant Planar RANSAC (SIPR) algorithm was developed. The best wall–plane correspondence is used as an external constraint to a custom Bundle Adjustment optimization which refines the motion estimation solution and enforces a global scale solution. A necessary condition is that only one wall needs to be in view. The feasibility of using the algorithms is tested with synthetic and real-world data; extensive testing is performed in an indoor simulation environment using the Unreal Engine and Microsoft Airsim. The system performs consistently across all three types of data. The tests presented in this paper show that the standard deviation of the error did not exceed 6 cm. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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28 pages, 4650 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Numerical and Experimental Evaluation of Error Estimation for Two-Way Ranging Methods

by Cung Lian Sang, Michael Adams, Timm Hörmann, Marc Hesse, Mario Porrmann and Ulrich Rückert

Sensors 2019, 19(3), 616; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19030616 - 1 Feb 2019

Cited by 44 | Viewed by 7155

Abstract

The Two-Way Ranging (TWR) method is commonly used for measuring the distance between two wireless transceiver nodes, especially when clock synchronization between the two nodes is not available. For modeling the time-of-flight (TOF) error between two wireless transceiver nodes in TWR, the existing [...] Read more.

The Two-Way Ranging (TWR) method is commonly used for measuring the distance between two wireless transceiver nodes, especially when clock synchronization between the two nodes is not available. For modeling the time-of-flight (TOF) error between two wireless transceiver nodes in TWR, the existing error model, described in the IEEE 802.15.4-2011 standard, is solely based on clock drift. However, it is inadequate for in-depth comparative analysis between different TWR methods. In this paper, we propose a novel TOF Error Estimation Model (TEEM) for TWR methods. Using the proposed model, we evaluate the comparative analysis between different TWR methods. The analytical results were validated with both numerical simulation and experimental results. Moreover, we demonstrate the pitfalls of the symmetric double-sided TWR (SDS-TWR) method, which is the most highlighted TWR method in the literature because of its highly accurate performance on clock-drift error reduction when reply times are symmetric. We argue that alternative double-sided TWR (AltDS-TWR) outperforms SDS-TWR. The argument was verified with both numerical simulation and experimental evaluation results. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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19 pages, 2384 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Constrained Unscented Particle Filter for SINS/GNSS/ADS Integrated Airship Navigation in the Presence of Wind Field Disturbance

by Zhaohui Gao, Dejun Mu, Yongmin Zhong and Chengfan Gu

Sensors 2019, 19(3), 471; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19030471 - 24 Jan 2019

Cited by 11 | Viewed by 3155

Abstract

Due to the disturbance of wind field, it is difficult to achieve precise airship positioning and navigation in the stratosphere. This paper presents a new constrained unscented particle filter (UPF) for SINS/GNSS/ADS (inertial navigation system/global navigation satellite system/atmosphere data system) integrated airship navigation. [...] Read more.

Due to the disturbance of wind field, it is difficult to achieve precise airship positioning and navigation in the stratosphere. This paper presents a new constrained unscented particle filter (UPF) for SINS/GNSS/ADS (inertial navigation system/global navigation satellite system/atmosphere data system) integrated airship navigation. This approach constructs a wind speed model to describe the relationship between airship velocity and wind speed using the information output from ADS, and further establishes a mathematical model for SINS/GNSS/ADS integrated navigation. Based on these models, it also develops a constrained UPF to obtain system state estimation for SINS/GNSS/ADS integration. The proposed constrained UPF uses the wind speed model to constrain the UPF filtering process to effectively resist the influence of wind field on the navigation solution. Simulations and comparison analysis demonstrate that the proposed approach can achieve optimal state estimation for SINS/GNSS/ADS integrated airship navigation in the presence of wind field disturbance. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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18 pages, 799 KiB

Open AccessArticle

UWB Localization with Battery-Powered Wireless Backbone for Drone-Based Inventory Management

by Nicola Macoir, Jan Bauwens, Bart Jooris, Ben Van Herbruggen, Jen Rossey, Jeroen Hoebeke and Eli De Poorter

Sensors 2019, 19(3), 467; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19030467 - 23 Jan 2019

Cited by 74 | Viewed by 10326

Abstract

Current inventory-taking methods (counting stocks and checking correct placements) in large vertical warehouses are mostly manual, resulting in (i) large personnel costs, (ii) human errors and (iii) incidents due to working at large heights. To remedy this, the use of autonomous indoor drones [...] Read more.

Current inventory-taking methods (counting stocks and checking correct placements) in large vertical warehouses are mostly manual, resulting in (i) large personnel costs, (ii) human errors and (iii) incidents due to working at large heights. To remedy this, the use of autonomous indoor drones has been proposed. However, these drones require accurate localization solutions that are easy to (temporarily) install at low costs in large warehouses. To this end, we designed a Ultra-Wideband (UWB) solution that uses infrastructure anchor nodes that do not require any wired backbone and can be battery powered. The resulting system has a theoretical update rate of up to 2892 Hz (assuming no hardware dependent delays). Moreover, the anchor nodes have an average current consumption of only 27 mA (compared to 130 mA of traditional UWB infrastructure nodes). Finally, the system has been experimentally validated and is available as open-source software. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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20 pages, 1143 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Indoor Positioning System Based on Chest-Mounted IMU

by Chuanhua Lu, Hideaki Uchiyama, Diego Thomas, Atsushi Shimada and Rin-ichiro Taniguchi

Sensors 2019, 19(2), 420; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19020420 - 21 Jan 2019

Cited by 59 | Viewed by 9041

Abstract

Demand for indoor navigation systems has been rapidly increasing with regard to location-based services. As a cost-effective choice, inertial measurement unit (IMU)-based pedestrian dead reckoning (PDR) systems have been developed for years because they do not require external devices to be installed in [...] Read more.

Demand for indoor navigation systems has been rapidly increasing with regard to location-based services. As a cost-effective choice, inertial measurement unit (IMU)-based pedestrian dead reckoning (PDR) systems have been developed for years because they do not require external devices to be installed in the environment. In this paper, we propose a PDR system based on a chest-mounted IMU as a novel installation position for body-suit-type systems. Since the IMU is mounted on a part of the upper body, the framework of the zero-velocity update cannot be applied because there are no periodical moments of zero velocity. Therefore, we propose a novel regression model for estimating step lengths only with accelerations to correctly compute step displacement by using the IMU data acquired at the chest. In addition, we integrated the idea of an efficient map-matching algorithm based on particle filtering into our system to improve positioning and heading accuracy. Since our system was designed for 3D navigation, which can estimate position in a multifloor building, we used a barometer to update pedestrian altitude, and the components of our map are designed to explicitly represent building-floor information. With our complete PDR system, we were awarded second place in 10 teams for the IPIN 2018 Competition Track 2, achieving a mean error of 5.2 m after the 800 m walking event. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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16 pages, 1141 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Indoor 3-D Localization Based on Received Signal Strength Difference and Factor Graph for Unknown Radio Transmitter

by Liyang Zhang, Taihang Du and Chundong Jiang

Sensors 2019, 19(2), 338; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19020338 - 16 Jan 2019

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3365

Abstract

Accurate localization of the radio transmitter is an important work in radio management. Previous research is more focused on two-dimensional (2-D) scenarios, but the localization of an unknown radio transmitter under three-dimensional (3-D) scenarios has more practical significance. In this paper, we propose [...] Read more.

Accurate localization of the radio transmitter is an important work in radio management. Previous research is more focused on two-dimensional (2-D) scenarios, but the localization of an unknown radio transmitter under three-dimensional (3-D) scenarios has more practical significance. In this paper, we propose a novel 3-D localization algorithm with received signal strength difference (RSSD) information and factor graph (FG), which is suitable for both line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) condition. Considering the stochastic properties of measurement errors caused by the indoor environment, RSSD measurements are processed with mean and variance in the form of Gaussian distribution in the FG framework. A new 3-D RSSD-based FG model is constructed with the relationship between RSSD and location coordinates by local linearization technique. The soft-information computation and iterative process of the proposed model are derived by using the sum-product algorithm. In addition, the impacts of different grid distances and number of signal receivers on positioning accuracy are explored. Finally, the performance of our proposed approach is experimentally evaluated in a real scenario. The results show that the positioning performance of the proposed algorithm is not only superior to the k-nearest neighbors (kNN) algorithm and least square (LS) algorithm, but also it can achieve a mean localization error as low as 1.15 m. Our proposed scheme provides a good solution for the accurate detection of an unknown radio transmitter under indoor 3-D space and has a good application prospect. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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22 pages, 6912 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Spoofing Attack Results Determination in Code Domain Using a Spoofing Process Equation

by Beomju Shin, Minhuck Park, Sanghoon Jeon, Hyoungmin So, Gapjin Kim and Changdon Kee

Sensors 2019, 19(2), 293; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19020293 - 12 Jan 2019

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 3958

Abstract

When a user receiver is tracking an authentic signal, a spoofing signal can be transmitted to the user antenna. The question is under what conditions does the tracking point of the receiver move from the authentic signal to the spoofing signal? In this [...] Read more.

When a user receiver is tracking an authentic signal, a spoofing signal can be transmitted to the user antenna. The question is under what conditions does the tracking point of the receiver move from the authentic signal to the spoofing signal? In this study, we develop a spoofing process equation (SPE) that can be used to calculate the tracking point of the delay lock loop (DLL) at regular chip intervals for the entire spoofing process. The condition for a successful spoofing signal is analyzed using the SPE. To derive the SPE, parameters, such as the signal strength, sweep velocity, loop filter order, and DLL bandwidth are considered. The success or failure of a spoofing attack is determined for a specific spoofing signal using the SPE. In addition, a correlation between each parameter for a successful spoofing attack could be obtained through the SPE. The simulation results show that the SPE performance is largely consistent with that of general DLL methods, even though the computational load of SPE is very low. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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26 pages, 7424 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Multi-User Personal Indoor Localization System Employing Graph-Based Optimization

by Michał R. Nowicki and Piotr Skrzypczyński

Sensors 2019, 19(1), 157; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19010157 - 4 Jan 2019

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 4436

Abstract

Personal indoor localization with smartphones is a well-researched area, with a number of approaches solving the problem separately for individual users. Most commonly, a particle filter is used to fuse information from dead reckoning and WiFi or Bluetooth adapters to provide an accurate [...] Read more.

Personal indoor localization with smartphones is a well-researched area, with a number of approaches solving the problem separately for individual users. Most commonly, a particle filter is used to fuse information from dead reckoning and WiFi or Bluetooth adapters to provide an accurate location of the person holding a smartphone. Unfortunately, the existing solutions largely ignore the gains that emerge when a single localization system estimates locations of multiple users in the same environment. Approaches based on filtration maintain only estimates of the current poses of the users, marginalizing the historical data. Therefore, it is difficult to fuse data from multiple individual trajectories that are usually not perfectly synchronized in time. We propose a system that fuses the information from WiFi and dead reckoning employing the graph-based optimization, which is widely applied in robotics. The presented system can be used for localization of a single user, but the improvement is especially visible when this approach is extended to a multi-user scenario. The article presents a number of experiments performed with a smartphone inside an office building. These experiments demonstrate that graph-based optimization can be used as an efficient fusion mechanism to obtain accurate trajectory estimates both in the case of a single user and in a multi-user indoor localization system. The code of our system together with recorded dataset will be made available when the paper gets published. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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17 pages, 2685 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Advanced Heterogeneous Feature Fusion Machine Learning Models and Algorithms for Improving Indoor Localization

by Lingwen Zhang, Ning Xiao, Wenkao Yang and Jun Li

Sensors 2019, 19(1), 125; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19010125 - 2 Jan 2019

Cited by 11 | Viewed by 4146

Abstract

In the era of the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence, the Wi-Fi fingerprinting-based indoor positioning system (IPS) has been recognized as the most promising IPS for various applications. Fingerprinting-based algorithms critically rely on a fingerprint database built from machine learning methods. However, [...] Read more.

In the era of the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence, the Wi-Fi fingerprinting-based indoor positioning system (IPS) has been recognized as the most promising IPS for various applications. Fingerprinting-based algorithms critically rely on a fingerprint database built from machine learning methods. However, currently methods are based on single-feature Received Signal Strength (RSS), which is extremely unstable in performance in terms of precision and robustness. The reason for this is that single feature machines cannot capture the complete channel characteristics and are susceptible to interference. The objective of this paper is to exploit the Time of Arrival (TOA) feature and propose a heterogeneous features fusion model to enhance the precision and robustness of indoor positioning. Several challenges are addressed: (1) machine learning models based on heterogeneous features, (2) the optimization of algorithms for high precision and robustness, and (3) computational complexity. This paper provides several heterogeneous features fusion-based localization models. Their effectiveness and efficiency are thoroughly compared with state-of-the-art methods. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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17 pages, 6415 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

Indoor Bluetooth Low Energy Dataset for Localization, Tracking, Occupancy, and Social Interaction

by Paolo Baronti, Paolo Barsocchi, Stefano Chessa, Fabio Mavilia and Filippo Palumbo

Sensors 2018, 18(12), 4462; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18124462 - 17 Dec 2018

Cited by 58 | Viewed by 6652

Abstract

Indoor localization has become a mature research area, but further scientific developments are limited due to the lack of open datasets and corresponding frameworks suitable to compare and evaluate specialized localization solutions. Although several competitions provide datasets and environments for comparing different solutions, [...] Read more.

Indoor localization has become a mature research area, but further scientific developments are limited due to the lack of open datasets and corresponding frameworks suitable to compare and evaluate specialized localization solutions. Although several competitions provide datasets and environments for comparing different solutions, they hardly consider novel technologies such as Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), which is gaining more and more importance in indoor localization due to its wide availability in personal and environmental devices and to its low costs and flexibility. This paper contributes to cover this gap by: (i) presenting a new indoor BLE dataset; (ii) reviewing several, meaningful use cases in different application scenarios; and (iii) discussing alternative uses of the dataset in the evaluation of different positioning and navigation applications, namely localization, tracking, occupancy and social interaction. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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21 pages, 2113 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Integrating Moving Platforms in a SLAM Agorithm for Pedestrian Navigation

by Susanna Kaiser and Christopher Lang

Sensors 2018, 18(12), 4367; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18124367 - 10 Dec 2018

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3317

Abstract

In 3D pedestrian indoor navigation applications, position estimation based on inertial measurement units (IMUss) fails when moving platforms (MPs), such as escalators and elevators, are not properly implemented. In this work, we integrate the MPs in an upper 3D-simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) [...] Read more.

In 3D pedestrian indoor navigation applications, position estimation based on inertial measurement units (IMUss) fails when moving platforms (MPs), such as escalators and elevators, are not properly implemented. In this work, we integrate the MPs in an upper 3D-simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) algorithm which is cascaded to the pedestrian dead-reckoning (PDR) technique. The step and heading measurements resulting from the PDR are fed to the SLAM that additionally estimates a map of the environment during the walk in order to reduce the remaining drift. For integrating MPs, we present a new proposal function for the particle filter implementation of the SLAM to account for the presence of MPs. In addition, a new weighting function for features such as escalators and elevators is developed and the features are learned and stored in the learned map. With this, locations of MPs are favored when revisiting the MPs again. The results show that the mean height error is about 0.1 m and the mean position error is less than 1 m for walks with long distances along the floors, even when using multiple floor level changes with different numbers of floors in a multistory environment. For walks with short walking distances and many floor level changes, the mean height error can be higher (about 0.5 m). The final floor number is in all cases except one correctly estimated. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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32 pages, 2421 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Smartphone-Based Indoor Localization within a 13th Century Historic Building

by Toni Fetzer, Frank Ebner, Markus Bullmann, Frank Deinzer and Marcin Grzegorzek

Sensors 2018, 18(12), 4095; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18124095 - 22 Nov 2018

Cited by 22 | Viewed by 4818

Abstract

Within this work we present an updated version of our indoor localization system for smartphones. The pedestrian’s position is given by means of recursive state estimation using a particle filter to incorporate different probabilistic sensor models. Our recently presented approximation scheme of the [...] Read more.

Within this work we present an updated version of our indoor localization system for smartphones. The pedestrian’s position is given by means of recursive state estimation using a particle filter to incorporate different probabilistic sensor models. Our recently presented approximation scheme of the kernel density estimation allows to find an exact estimation of the current position, compared to classical methods like weighted-average. Absolute positioning information is given by a comparison between recent Wi-Fi measurements of nearby access points and signal strength predictions. Instead of using time-consuming approaches like classic fingerprinting or measuring the exact positions of access points, we use an optimization scheme based on a set of reference measurements to estimate a corresponding Wi-Fi model. This work provides three major contributions to the system. The most essential contribution is the novel state transition based on continuous walks along a navigation mesh, modeling only the building’s walkable areas. The localization system is further updated by incorporating a threshold-based activity recognition using barometer and accelerometer readings, allowing for continuous and smooth floor changes. Within the scope of this work, we tackle problems like multimodal densities and sample impoverishment (system gets stuck) by introducing different countermeasures. For the latter, a simplification of our previous solution is presented for the first time, which does not involve any major changes to the particle filter. The goal of this work is to propose a fast to deploy localization solution, that provides reasonable results in a high variety of situations. To stress our system, we have chosen a very challenging test scenario. All experiments were conducted within a 13th century historic building, formerly a convent and today a museum. The system is evaluated using 28 distinct measurement series on four different test walks, up to 310

m

length and 10

\min

duration. It can be shown, that the here presented localization solution is able to provide a small positioning error, even under difficult conditions and faulty measurements. The introduced filtering methods allow for a real fail-safe system, while the optimization scheme enables an on-site setup-time of less then 120

\min

for the building’s 2500 m² walkable area. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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22 pages, 7234 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Augmentation of GNSS by Low-Cost MEMS IMU, OBD-II, and Digital Altimeter for Improved Positioning in Urban Area

by JoonHoo Lim, Won Jae Yoo, La Woo Kim, You Dam Lee and Hyung Keun Lee

Sensors 2018, 18(11), 3830; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18113830 - 8 Nov 2018

Cited by 16 | Viewed by 4802

Abstract

This paper proposes an efficient multi-sensor system to complement GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) for improved positioning in urban area. The proposed system augments GNSS by low-cost MEMS IMU (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems Inertial Measurement Unit), OBD (On-Board Diagnostics)-II, and digital altimeter modules. [...] Read more.

This paper proposes an efficient multi-sensor system to complement GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) for improved positioning in urban area. The proposed system augments GNSS by low-cost MEMS IMU (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems Inertial Measurement Unit), OBD (On-Board Diagnostics)-II, and digital altimeter modules. For improved availability of time synchronization in urban area, an adaptive synchronization method is proposed to combine the external PPS (Pulse Per Second) signal and the internal onboard clock. For improved positioning accuracy and availability, a 17-state Kalman filter is formulated for efficient multi-sensor fusion, including OBD-II and digital altimeter modules. A strategy to apply different types of measurement updates is also proposed for improved performance in urban area. Four experiment results with field-collected measurements evaluates the performance of the proposed GNSS/IMU/OBD-II/altimeter system in various aspects, including accuracy, precision, continuity, and availability. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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18 pages, 4456 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Fast Signals of Opportunity Fingerprint Database Maintenance with Autonomous Unmanned Ground Vehicle for Indoor Positioning

by Yitang Peng, Xiaoji Niu, Jian Tang, Dazhi Mao and Chuang Qian

Sensors 2018, 18(10), 3419; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18103419 - 12 Oct 2018

Cited by 15 | Viewed by 3442

Abstract

Indoor positioning technology based on Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) fingerprints is a potential navigation solution, which has the advantages of simple implementation, low cost and high precision. However, as the radio frequency signals can be easily affected by the environmental change during [...] Read more.

Indoor positioning technology based on Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) fingerprints is a potential navigation solution, which has the advantages of simple implementation, low cost and high precision. However, as the radio frequency signals can be easily affected by the environmental change during its transmission, it is quite necessary to build location fingerprint database in advance and update it frequently, thereby guaranteeing the positioning accuracy. At present, the fingerprint database building methods mainly include point collection and line acquisition, both of which are usually labor-intensive and time consuming, especially in a large map area. This paper proposes a fast and efficient location fingerprint database construction and updating method based on a self-developed Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) platform NAVIS, called Automatic Robot Line Collection. A smartphone was installed on NAVIS for collecting indoor Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) fingerprints of Signals of Opportunity (SOP), such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Meanwhile, indoor map was created by 2D LiDAR-based Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) technology. The UGV automatically traverse the unknown indoor environment due to a pre-designed full-coverage path planning algorithm. Then, SOP sensors collect location fingerprints and generates grid map during the process of environment-traversing. Finally, location fingerprint database is built or updated by Kriging interpolation. Field tests were carried out to verify the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed method. The results showed that, compared with the traditional point collection and line collection schemes, the root mean square error of the fingerprinting-based positioning results were reduced by 35.9% and 25.0% in static tests and 30.0% and 21.3% respectively in dynamic tests. Moreover, our UGV can traverse the indoor environment autonomously without human-labor on data acquisition, the efficiency of the automatic robot line collection scheme is 2.65 times and 1.72 times that of the traditional point collection and the traditional line acquisition, respectively. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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14 pages, 4467 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Real-Time Recursive Fingerprint Radio Map Creation Algorithm Combining Wi-Fi and Geomagnetism

by Ju-Hyeon Seong and Dong-Hoan Seo

Sensors 2018, 18(10), 3390; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18103390 - 10 Oct 2018

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3501

Abstract

Fingerprint is a typical indoor-positioning algorithm, which measures the strength of wireless signals and creates a radio map. Using this radio map, the position is estimated through comparisons with the received signal strength measured in real-time. The radio map has a direct effect [...] Read more.

Fingerprint is a typical indoor-positioning algorithm, which measures the strength of wireless signals and creates a radio map. Using this radio map, the position is estimated through comparisons with the received signal strength measured in real-time. The radio map has a direct effect on the positioning performance; therefore, it should be designed accurately and managed efficiently, according to the type of wireless signal, amount of space, and wireless-signal density. This paper proposes a real-time recursive radio map creation algorithm that combines Wi-Fi and geomagnetism. The proposed method automatically recreates the radio map using geomagnetic radio-map dual processing (GRDP), which reduces the time required to create it. It also reduces the size of the radio map by actively optimizing its dimensions using an entropy-based minimum description length principle (MDLP) method. Experimental results in an actual building show that the proposed system exhibits similar map creation time as a system using a Wi-Fi–based radio map. Geomagnetic radio maps exhibiting over 80% positioning accuracy were created, and the dimensions of the radio map that combined the two signals were found to be reduced by 23.81%, compared to the initially prepared radio map. The dimensions vary according to the wireless signal state, and are automatically reduced in different environments. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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17 pages, 314 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Decentralized Cooperative Localization with Fault Detection and Isolation in Robot Teams

by Mei Wu, Hongbin Ma and Xinghong Zhang

Sensors 2018, 18(10), 3360; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18103360 - 8 Oct 2018

Cited by 12 | Viewed by 3026

Abstract

Robot localization, particularly multirobot localization, is an important task for multirobot teams. In this paper, a decentralized cooperative localization (DCL) algorithm with fault detection and isolation is proposed to estimate the positions of robots in mobile robot teams. To calculate the interestimate correlations [...] Read more.

Robot localization, particularly multirobot localization, is an important task for multirobot teams. In this paper, a decentralized cooperative localization (DCL) algorithm with fault detection and isolation is proposed to estimate the positions of robots in mobile robot teams. To calculate the interestimate correlations in a distributed manner, the split covariance intersection filter (SCIF) is applied in the algorithm. Based on the split covariance intersection filter cooperative localization (SCIFCL) algorithm, we adopt fault detection and isolation (FDI) to improve the robustness and accuracy of the DCL results. In the proposed algorithm, the signature matrix of the original FDI algorithm is modified for application to DCL. A simulation-based comparative study is conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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20 pages, 6787 KiB

Open AccessArticle

An Improved Strapdown Inertial Navigation System Initial Alignment Algorithm for Unmanned Vehicles

by Ya Zhang, Fei Yu, Wei Gao and Yanyan Wang

Sensors 2018, 18(10), 3297; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18103297 - 30 Sep 2018

Cited by 21 | Viewed by 4375

Abstract

Along with the development of computer technology and informatization, the unmanned vehicle has become an important equipment in military, civil and some other fields. The navigation system is the basis and core of realizing the autonomous control and completing the task for unmanned [...] Read more.

Along with the development of computer technology and informatization, the unmanned vehicle has become an important equipment in military, civil and some other fields. The navigation system is the basis and core of realizing the autonomous control and completing the task for unmanned vehicles, and the Strapdown Inertial Navigation System (SINS) is the preferred due to its autonomy and independence. The initial alignment technique is the premise and the foundation of the SINS, whose performance is susceptible to system nonlinearity and uncertainty. To improving system performance for SINS, an improved initial alignment algorithm is proposed in this manuscript. In the procedure of this presented initial alignment algorithm, the original signal of inertial sensors is denoised by utilizing the improved signal denoising method based on the Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) and the Extreme Learning Machine (ELM) firstly to suppress the high-frequency noise on coarse alignment. Afterwards, the accuracy and reliability of initial alignment is further enhanced by utilizing an improved Robust Huber Cubarure Kalman Filer (RHCKF) method to minimize the influence of system nonlinearity and uncertainty on the fine alignment. In addition, real tests are used to verify the availability and superiority of this proposed initial alignment algorithm. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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19 pages, 3593 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Adaptive Fifth-Degree Cubature Information Filter for Multi-Sensor Bearings-Only Tracking

by Haonan Jiang and Yuanli Cai

Sensors 2018, 18(10), 3241; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18103241 - 26 Sep 2018

Cited by 13 | Viewed by 2979

Abstract

Standard Bayesian filtering algorithms only work well when the statistical properties of system noises are exactly known. However, this assumption is not always plausible in real target tracking applications. In this paper, we present a new estimation approach named adaptive fifth-degree cubature information [...] Read more.

Standard Bayesian filtering algorithms only work well when the statistical properties of system noises are exactly known. However, this assumption is not always plausible in real target tracking applications. In this paper, we present a new estimation approach named adaptive fifth-degree cubature information filter (AFCIF) for multi-sensor bearings-only tracking (BOT) under the condition that the process noise follows zero-mean Gaussian distribution with unknown covariance. The novel algorithm is based on the fifth-degree cubature Kalman filter and it is constructed within the information filtering framework. With a sensor selection strategy developed using observability theory and a recursive process noise covariance estimation procedure derived using the covariance matching principle, the proposed filtering algorithm demonstrates better estimation accuracy and filtering stability. Simulation results validate the superiority of the AFCIF. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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17 pages, 3539 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Maximum Correntropy Based Unscented Particle Filter for Cooperative Navigation with Heavy-Tailed Measurement Noises

by Ying Fan, Yonggang Zhang, Guoqing Wang, Xiaoyu Wang and Ning Li

Sensors 2018, 18(10), 3183; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18103183 - 20 Sep 2018

Cited by 22 | Viewed by 3607

Abstract

In this paper, a novel robust particle filter is proposed to address the measurement outliers occurring in the multiple autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) based cooperative navigation (CN). As compared with the classic unscented particle filter (UPF) based on Gaussian assumption of measurement noise, [...] Read more.

In this paper, a novel robust particle filter is proposed to address the measurement outliers occurring in the multiple autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) based cooperative navigation (CN). As compared with the classic unscented particle filter (UPF) based on Gaussian assumption of measurement noise, the proposed robust particle filter based on the maximum correntropy criterion (MCC) exhibits better robustness against heavy-tailed measurement noises that are often induced by measurement outliers in CN systems. Furthermore, the proposed robust particle filter is computationally much more efficient than existing robust UPF due to the use of a Kullback-Leibler distance-resampling to adjust the number of particles online. Experimental results based on actual lake trial show that the proposed maximum correntropy based unscented particle filter (MCUPF) has better estimation accuracy than existing state-of-the-art robust filters for CN systems with heavy-tailed measurement noises, and the proposed MCUPF has lower computational complexity than existing robust particle filters. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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18 pages, 4667 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Fusion Method for Combining Low-Cost IMU/Magnetometer Outputs for Use in Applications on Mobile Devices

by Photis Patonis, Petros Patias, Ilias N. Tziavos, Dimitrios Rossikopoulos and Konstantinos G. Margaritis

Sensors 2018, 18(8), 2616; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18082616 - 9 Aug 2018

Cited by 31 | Viewed by 5736

Abstract

This paper presents a fusion method for combining outputs acquired by low-cost inertial measurement units and electronic magnetic compasses. Specifically, measurements of inertial accelerometer and gyroscope sensors are combined with no-inertial magnetometer sensor measurements to provide the optimal three-dimensional (3D) orientation of the [...] Read more.

This paper presents a fusion method for combining outputs acquired by low-cost inertial measurement units and electronic magnetic compasses. Specifically, measurements of inertial accelerometer and gyroscope sensors are combined with no-inertial magnetometer sensor measurements to provide the optimal three-dimensional (3D) orientation of the sensors’ axis systems in real time. The method combines Euler–Cardan angles and rotation matrix for attitude and heading representation estimation and deals with the “gimbal lock” problem. The mathematical formulation of the method is based on Kalman filter and takes into account the computational cost required for operation on mobile devices as well as the characteristics of the low-cost microelectromechanical sensors. The method was implemented, debugged, and evaluated in a desktop software utility by using a low-cost sensor system, and it was tested in an augmented reality application on an Android mobile device, while its efficiency was evaluated experimentally. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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26 pages, 8795 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Hierarchical Voting Based Mixed Filter Localization Method for Wireless Sensor Network in Mixed LOS/NLOS Environments

by Yan Wang, Jinquan Hang, Long Cheng, Chen Li and Xin Song

Sensors 2018, 18(7), 2348; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18072348 - 19 Jul 2018

Cited by 18 | Viewed by 3805

Abstract

In recent years, the rapid development of microelectronics, wireless communications, and electro-mechanical systems has occurred. The wireless sensor network (WSN) has been widely used in many applications. The localization of a mobile node is one of the key technologies for WSN. Among the [...] Read more.

In recent years, the rapid development of microelectronics, wireless communications, and electro-mechanical systems has occurred. The wireless sensor network (WSN) has been widely used in many applications. The localization of a mobile node is one of the key technologies for WSN. Among the factors that would affect the accuracy of mobile localization, non-line of sight (NLOS) propagation caused by a complicated environment plays a vital role. In this paper, we present a hierarchical voting based mixed filter (HVMF) localization method for a mobile node in a mixed line of sight (LOS) and NLOS environment. We firstly propose a condition detection and distance correction algorithm based on hierarchical voting. Then, a mixed square root unscented Kalman filter (SRUKF) and a particle filter (PF) are used to filter the larger measurement error. Finally, the filtered results are subjected to convex optimization and the maximum likelihood estimation to estimate the position of the mobile node. The proposed method does not require prior information about the statistical properties of the NLOS errors and operates in a 2D scenario. It can be applied to time of arrival (TOA), time difference of arrival (TDOA), received signal (RSS), and other measurement methods. The simulation results show that the HVMF algorithm can efficiently reduce the effect of NLOS errors and can achieve higher localization accuracy than the Kalman filter and PF. The proposed algorithm is robust to the NLOS errors. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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23 pages, 3588 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Intersection and Complement Set (IACS) Method to Reduce Redundant Node in Mobile WSN Localization

by Muhammad Zar Mohd. Zaid Harith, Noorzaily Mohamed Noor, Mohd. Yamani Idna Idris and Emran Mohd. Tamil

Sensors 2018, 18(7), 2344; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18072344 - 19 Jul 2018

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3086

Abstract

The majority of the Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) localization methods utilize a large number of nodes to achieve high localization accuracy. However, there are many unnecessary data redundancies that contributes to high computation, communication, and energy cost between these nodes. Therefore, we propose [...] Read more.

The majority of the Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) localization methods utilize a large number of nodes to achieve high localization accuracy. However, there are many unnecessary data redundancies that contributes to high computation, communication, and energy cost between these nodes. Therefore, we propose the Intersection and Complement Set (IACS) method to reduce these redundant data by selecting the most significant neighbor nodes for the localization process. Through duplication cleaning and average filtering steps, the proposed IACS selects the normal nodes with unique intersection and complement sets in the first and second hop neighbors to localize the unknown node. If the intersection or complement sets of the normal nodes are duplicated, IACS only selects the node with the shortest distance to the blind node and nodes that have total elements larger than the average of the intersection or complement sets. The proposed IACS is tested in various simulation settings and compared with MSL* and LCC. The performance of all methods is investigated using the default settings and a different number of degree of irregularity, normal node density, maximum velocity of sensor node and number of samples. From the simulation, IACS successfully reduced 25% of computation cost, 25% of communication cost and 6% of energy consumption compared to MSL*, while 15% of computation cost, 13% of communication cost and 3% of energy consumption compared to LCC. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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15 pages, 2769 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Adaptive Square-Root Unscented Particle Filtering Algorithm for Dynamic Navigation

by Wenhui Wei, Shesheng Gao, Yongmin Zhong, Chengfan Gu and Gaoge Hu

Sensors 2018, 18(7), 2337; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18072337 - 18 Jul 2018

Cited by 34 | Viewed by 3691

Abstract

This paper presents a new adaptive square-root unscented particle filtering algorithm by combining the adaptive filtering and square-root filtering into the unscented particle filter to inhibit the disturbance of kinematic model noise and the instability of filtering data in the process of nonlinear [...] Read more.

This paper presents a new adaptive square-root unscented particle filtering algorithm by combining the adaptive filtering and square-root filtering into the unscented particle filter to inhibit the disturbance of kinematic model noise and the instability of filtering data in the process of nonlinear filtering. To prevent particles from degeneracy, the proposed algorithm adaptively adjusts the adaptive factor, which is constructed from predicted residuals, to refrain from the disturbance of abnormal observation and the kinematic model noise. Cholesky factorization is also applied to suppress the negative definiteness of the covariance matrices of the predicted state vector and observation vector. Experiments and comparison analysis were conducted to comprehensively evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. The results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm exhibits a strong overall performance for integrated navigation systems. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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18 pages, 744 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Integration of Low-Cost GNSS and Monocular Cameras for Simultaneous Localization and Mapping

by Xiao Chen, Weidong Hu, Lefeng Zhang, Zhiguang Shi and Maisi Li

Sensors 2018, 18(7), 2193; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18072193 - 7 Jul 2018

Cited by 32 | Viewed by 5345

Abstract

Low-cost Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers and monocular cameras are widely used in daily activities. The complementary nature of these two devices is ideal for outdoor navigation. In this paper, we investigate the integration of GNSS and monocular camera measurements in a [...] Read more.

Low-cost Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers and monocular cameras are widely used in daily activities. The complementary nature of these two devices is ideal for outdoor navigation. In this paper, we investigate the integration of GNSS and monocular camera measurements in a simultaneous localization and mapping system. The proposed system first aligns the coordinates between two sensors. Subsequently, the measurements are fused by an optimization-based scheme. Our system can function in real-time and obtain the absolute position, scale, and attitude of the vehicle. It achieves a high accuracy without a preset map and also has the capability to work with a preset map. The system can easily be extended to create other forms of maps or for other types of cameras. Experimental results on a popular public dataset are presented to validate the performance of the proposed system. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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22 pages, 3882 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Light-Weight Integration and Interoperation of Localization Systems in IoT

by Abdulkadir Karaagac, Pieter Suanet, Wout Joseph, Ingrid Moerman and Jeroen Hoebeke

Sensors 2018, 18(7), 2142; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18072142 - 3 Jul 2018

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 5371

Abstract

As the ideas and technologies behind the Internet of Things (IoT) take root, a vast array of new possibilities and applications is emerging with the significantly increased number of devices connected to the Internet. Moreover, we are also witnessing the fast emergence of [...] Read more.

As the ideas and technologies behind the Internet of Things (IoT) take root, a vast array of new possibilities and applications is emerging with the significantly increased number of devices connected to the Internet. Moreover, we are also witnessing the fast emergence of location-based services with an abundant number of localization technologies and solutions with varying capabilities and limitations. We believe that, at this moment in time, the successful integration of these two diverse technologies is mutually beneficial and even essential for both fields. IoT is one of the major fields that can benefit from localization services, and so, the integration of localization systems in the IoT ecosystem would enable numerous new IoT applications. Further, the use of standardized IoT architectures, interaction and information models will permit multiple localization systems to communicate and interoperate with each other in order to obtain better context information and resolve positioning errors or conflicts. Therefore, in this work, we investigate the semantic interoperation and integration of positioning systems in order to obtain the full potential of the localization ecosystem in the context of IoT. Additionally, we also validate the proposed design by means of an industrial case study, which targets fully-automated warehouses utilizing location-aware and interconnected IoT products and systems. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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19 pages, 706 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Analysis of the Scalability of UWB Indoor Localization Solutions for High User Densities

by Matteo Ridolfi, Samuel Van de Velde, Heidi Steendam and Eli De Poorter

Sensors 2018, 18(6), 1875; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18061875 - 7 Jun 2018

Cited by 84 | Viewed by 8375

Abstract

Radio frequency (RF) technologies are often used to track assets in indoor environments. Among others, ultra-wideband (UWB) has constantly gained interest thanks to its capability to obtain typical errors of 30 cm or lower, making it more accurate than other wireless technologies such [...] Read more.

Radio frequency (RF) technologies are often used to track assets in indoor environments. Among others, ultra-wideband (UWB) has constantly gained interest thanks to its capability to obtain typical errors of 30 cm or lower, making it more accurate than other wireless technologies such as WiFi, which normally can predict the location with several meters accuracy. However, mainly due to technical requirements that are part of the standard, conventional medium access strategies such as clear channel assessment, are not straightforward to implement. Since most scientific papers focus on UWB accuracy improvements of a single user, it is not clear to which extend this limitation and other design choices impact the scalability of UWB indoor positioning systems. We investigated the scalability of indoor localization solutions, to prove that UWB can be used when hundreds of tags are active in the same system. This paper provides mathematical models that calculate the theoretical supported user density for multiple localization approaches, namely Time Difference of Arrival (TDoA) and Two-Way Ranging (TWR) with different MAC protocol combinations, i.e., ALOHA and TDMA. Moreover, this paper applies these formulas to a number of realistic UWB configurations to study the impact of different UWB schemes and settings. When applied to the 802.15.4a compliant Decawave DW1000 chip, the scalability dramatically degrades if the system operates with uncoordinated protocols and two-way communication schemes. In the best case scenario, UWB DW1000 chips can actively support up to 6171 tags in a single domain cell (no handover) with well-selected settings and choices, i.e., when adopting the combination of TDoA (one-way link) and TDMA. As a consequence, UWB can be used to simultaneously localize thousands of nodes in a dense network. However, we also show that the number of supported devices varies greatly depending on the MAC and PHY configuration choices. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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24 pages, 8748 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Pedestrian Dead Reckoning Based on Motion Mode Recognition Using a Smartphone

by Boyuan Wang, Xuelin Liu, Baoguo Yu, Ruicai Jia and Xingli Gan

Sensors 2018, 18(6), 1811; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18061811 - 4 Jun 2018

Cited by 78 | Viewed by 7748

Abstract

This paper presents a pedestrian dead reckoning (PDR) approach based on motion mode recognition using a smartphone. The motion mode consists of pedestrian movement state and phone pose. With the support vector machine (SVM) and the decision tree (DT), the arbitrary combinations of [...] Read more.

This paper presents a pedestrian dead reckoning (PDR) approach based on motion mode recognition using a smartphone. The motion mode consists of pedestrian movement state and phone pose. With the support vector machine (SVM) and the decision tree (DT), the arbitrary combinations of movement state and phone pose can be recognized successfully. In the traditional principal component analysis based (PCA-based) method, the obtained horizontal accelerations in one stride time interval cannot be guaranteed to be horizontal and the pedestrian’s direction vector will be influenced. To solve this problem, we propose a PCA-based method with global accelerations (PCA-GA) to infer pedestrian’s headings. Besides, based on the further analysis of phone poses, an ambiguity elimination method is also developed to calibrate the obtained headings. The results indicate that the recognition accuracy of the combinations of movement states and phone poses can be 92.4%. The 50% and 75% absolute estimation errors of pedestrian’s headings are 5.6° and 9.2°, respectively. This novel PCA-GA based method can achieve higher accuracy than traditional PCA-based method and heading offset method. The localization error can reduce to around 3.5 m in a trajectory of 164 m for different movement states and phone poses. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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25 pages, 1304 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Maximum Correntropy Unscented Kalman Filter for Ballistic Missile Navigation System based on SINS/CNS Deeply Integrated Mode

by Bowen Hou, Zhangming He, Dong Li, Haiyin Zhou and Jiongqi Wang

Sensors 2018, 18(6), 1724; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18061724 - 27 May 2018

Cited by 41 | Viewed by 4933

Abstract

Strap-down inertial navigation system/celestial navigation system (SINS/CNS) integrated navigation is a high precision navigation technique for ballistic missiles. The traditional navigation method has a divergence in the position error. A deeply integrated mode for SINS/CNS navigation system is proposed to improve the navigation [...] Read more.

Strap-down inertial navigation system/celestial navigation system (SINS/CNS) integrated navigation is a high precision navigation technique for ballistic missiles. The traditional navigation method has a divergence in the position error. A deeply integrated mode for SINS/CNS navigation system is proposed to improve the navigation accuracy of ballistic missile. The deeply integrated navigation principle is described and the observability of the navigation system is analyzed. The nonlinearity, as well as the large outliers and the Gaussian mixture noises, often exists during the actual navigation process, leading to the divergence phenomenon of the navigation filter. The new nonlinear Kalman filter on the basis of the maximum correntropy theory and unscented transformation, named the maximum correntropy unscented Kalman filter, is deduced, and the computational complexity is analyzed. The unscented transformation is used for restricting the nonlinearity of the system equation, and the maximum correntropy theory is used to deal with the non-Gaussian noises. Finally, numerical simulation illustrates the superiority of the proposed filter compared with the traditional unscented Kalman filter. The comparison results show that the large outliers and the influence of non-Gaussian noises for SINS/CNS deeply integrated navigation is significantly reduced through the proposed filter. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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18 pages, 772 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A BLE-Based Pedestrian Navigation System for Car Searching in Indoor Parking Garages

by Sheng-Shih Wang

Sensors 2018, 18(5), 1442; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18051442 - 5 May 2018

Cited by 19 | Viewed by 5248

Abstract

The continuous global increase in the number of cars has led to an increase in parking issues, particularly with respect to the search for available parking spaces and finding cars. In this paper, we propose a navigation system for car owners to find [...] Read more.

The continuous global increase in the number of cars has led to an increase in parking issues, particularly with respect to the search for available parking spaces and finding cars. In this paper, we propose a navigation system for car owners to find their cars in indoor parking garages. The proposed system comprises a car-searching mobile app and a positioning-assisting subsystem. The app guides car owners to their cars based on a “turn-by-turn” navigation strategy, and has the ability to correct the user’s heading orientation. The subsystem uses beacon technology for indoor positioning, supporting self-guidance of the car-searching mobile app. This study also designed a local coordinate system to support the identification of the locations of parking spaces and beacon devices. We used Android as the platform to implement the proposed car-searching mobile app, and used Bytereal HiBeacon devices to implement the proposed positioning-assisting subsystem. We also deployed the system in a parking lot in our campus for testing. The experimental results verified that the proposed system not only works well, but also provides the car owner with the correct route guidance information. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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25 pages, 5785 KiB

Open AccessArticle

PL-VIO: Tightly-Coupled Monocular Visual–Inertial Odometry Using Point and Line Features

by Yijia He, Ji Zhao, Yue Guo, Wenhao He and Kui Yuan

Sensors 2018, 18(4), 1159; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18041159 - 10 Apr 2018

Cited by 244 | Viewed by 20367

Abstract

To address the problem of estimating camera trajectory and to build a structural three-dimensional (3D) map based on inertial measurements and visual observations, this paper proposes point–line visual–inertial odometry (PL-VIO), a tightly-coupled monocular visual–inertial odometry system exploiting both point and line features. Compared [...] Read more.

To address the problem of estimating camera trajectory and to build a structural three-dimensional (3D) map based on inertial measurements and visual observations, this paper proposes point–line visual–inertial odometry (PL-VIO), a tightly-coupled monocular visual–inertial odometry system exploiting both point and line features. Compared with point features, lines provide significantly more geometrical structure information on the environment. To obtain both computation simplicity and representational compactness of a 3D spatial line, Plücker coordinates and orthonormal representation for the line are employed. To tightly and efficiently fuse the information from inertial measurement units (IMUs) and visual sensors, we optimize the states by minimizing a cost function which combines the pre-integrated IMU error term together with the point and line re-projection error terms in a sliding window optimization framework. The experiments evaluated on public datasets demonstrate that the PL-VIO method that combines point and line features outperforms several state-of-the-art VIO systems which use point features only. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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19 pages, 3124 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A SINS/SRS/GNS Autonomous Integrated Navigation System Based on Spectral Redshift Velocity Measurements

by Wenhui Wei, Zhaohui Gao, Shesheng Gao and Ke Jia

Sensors 2018, 18(4), 1145; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18041145 - 9 Apr 2018

Cited by 25 | Viewed by 6404

Abstract

In order to meet the requirements of autonomy and reliability for the navigation system, combined with the method of measuring speed by using the spectral redshift information of the natural celestial bodies, a new scheme, consisting of Strapdown Inertial Navigation System (SINS)/Spectral Redshift [...] Read more.

In order to meet the requirements of autonomy and reliability for the navigation system, combined with the method of measuring speed by using the spectral redshift information of the natural celestial bodies, a new scheme, consisting of Strapdown Inertial Navigation System (SINS)/Spectral Redshift (SRS)/Geomagnetic Navigation System (GNS), is designed for autonomous integrated navigation systems. The principle of this SINS/SRS/GNS autonomous integrated navigation system is explored, and the corresponding mathematical model is established. Furthermore, a robust adaptive central difference particle filtering algorithm is proposed for this autonomous integrated navigation system. The simulation experiments are conducted and the results show that the designed SINS/SRS/GNS autonomous integrated navigation system possesses good autonomy, strong robustness and high reliability, thus providing a new solution for autonomous navigation technology. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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36 pages, 2614 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Direct Position Determination of Unknown Signals in the Presence of Multipath Propagation

by Jianping Du, Ding Wang, Wanting Yu and Hongyi Yu

Sensors 2018, 18(3), 892; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18030892 - 17 Mar 2018

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 4538

Abstract

A novel geolocation architecture, termed “Multiple Transponders and Multiple Receivers for Multiple Emitters Positioning System (MTRE)” is proposed in this paper. Existing Direct Position Determination (DPD) methods take advantage of a rather simple channel assumption (line of sight channels with complex path attenuations) [...] Read more.

A novel geolocation architecture, termed “Multiple Transponders and Multiple Receivers for Multiple Emitters Positioning System (MTRE)” is proposed in this paper. Existing Direct Position Determination (DPD) methods take advantage of a rather simple channel assumption (line of sight channels with complex path attenuations) and a simplified MUltiple SIgnal Classification (MUSIC) algorithm cost function to avoid the high dimension searching. We point out that the simplified assumption and cost function reduce the positioning accuracy because of the singularity of the array manifold in a multi-path environment. We present a DPD model for unknown signals in the presence of Multi-path Propagation (MP-DPD) in this paper. MP-DPD adds non-negative real path attenuation constraints to avoid the mistake caused by the singularity of the array manifold. The Multi-path Propagation MUSIC (MP-MUSIC) method and the Active Set Algorithm (ASA) are designed to reduce the dimension of searching. A Multi-path Propagation Maximum Likelihood (MP-ML) method is proposed in addition to overcome the limitation of MP-MUSIC in the sense of a time-sensitive application. An iterative algorithm and an approach of initial value setting are given to make the MP-ML time consumption acceptable. Numerical results validate the performances improvement of MP-MUSIC and MP-ML. A closed form of the Cramér–Rao Lower Bound (CRLB) is derived as a benchmark to evaluate the performances of MP-MUSIC and MP-ML. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sensor Fusion and Novel Technologies in Positioning and Navigation)

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