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

• Main Authors: Toni Fetzer, Frank Ebner, Markus Bullmann, Frank Deinzer, Marcin Grzegorzek
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2018-11-01
• Series: Sensors
• Subjects: indoor localization; Wi-Fi; PDR; sensor fusion; smartphone; particle filter; sample impoverishment; estimation; historic buildings; navigation mesh
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/18/12/4095

Within this work we present an updated version of our indoor localization system for smartphones. The pedestrian&#8217;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&#8217;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 <inline-formula> <math display="inline"> <semantics> <mi mathvariant="normal">m</mi> </semantics> </math> </inline-formula> length and 10 <inline-formula> <math display="inline"> <semantics> <mi>min</mi> </semantics> </math> </inline-formula> 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 <inline-formula> <math display="inline"> <semantics> <mi>min</mi> </semantics> </math> </inline-formula> for the building&#8217;s 2500 m² walkable area.