Inertial sensor-based indoor pedestrian localization with minimum 802.15.4a configuration

Available techniques for indoor object locating systems, such as inertial sensor-based system or radio fingerprinting, hardly satisfy both cost-effectiveness and accuracy. In particular, inertial sensor-based locating systems are often supplemented with radio signals to improve localization accuracy. A radio-assisted localization system is still costly due to the infrastructure requirements and management overheads. In this paper, we propose a low-cost and yet accurate indoor pedestrian localization scheme with a small number of radio beacons whose location information is unknown. Our scheme applies the Simultaneous Location and Mapping (SLAM) technique used in robotics to mobile device, which is equipped with both inertial sensors and the IEEE802.15.4a Chirp Spread Spectrum (CSS) radio, to obtain accurate locations of pedestrians in indoor environment. The proposed system is validated with real implementations. The experiment results show approximately 1.5 m mean error observed during 276 m of pedestrian moving in a 380 m² indoor environment with five position-unknown beacons.