Indoor Magnetic-Based Positioning System

Dear Colleagues,

Magnetic-based positioning systems (MBPS) are a viable solution and an enabler for several modern fields of application that include location-based services, biometrics, line traceability, telemanipulation, and ambient assisted living. Since magnetic fields penetrate many materials, MBPS typically tolerate non-line-of-sight operations, while usage of DC fields or of low frequency AC fields prevents multipath phenomena. Various sensing techniques can be used, including Hall sensors, coils, giant magnetoresistive sensors, and anisotropic magneto resistive sensors, often leading to simple positioning and tracking systems based on received signal strength measurements. Magnetic field anomalies, induced, for instance, by soft or hard iron distortion, reduce the accuracy of MPBSs but may in turn exploited using fingerprinting approaches by preliminarily mapping a given operational environment. The mentioned characteristics make MBPSs suitable for the indoor environment and competitive with other viable technologies. With respect to MBPSs, narrowband RF systems are prone to multipath, ultrasound systems require line of sight, inertial sensors may lead to error accumulation, while ultrawide band (UWB) and image-based systems are usually more expensive. Nevertheless, various measurement principles may be jointly applied, leading to accurate 2D/3D indoor positioning systems based on sensor fusion. To this aim, it is worth noting that modern smartphones and tablets come equipped with a multistandard radio interface, a GNSS receiver, an array of heterogeneous sensors, including inertial sensors and magnetometers, and feature enough processing power to run sophisticated sensor fusion and machine learning algorithms.

This Special Issue targets novel research results for indoor MBPSs, focused mostly, but not exclusively, on magnetic field generation and sensing, node architecture and connectivity, design tradeoffs, positioning algorithms, sensor fusion, and overall positioning and tracking performance.

Prof. Dr. Antonio Moschitta
Guest Editor

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