Map Aided Indoor Positioning

Sammanfattning:

The popularity of wireless sensor networks is constantly increasing, both for use instatic machine to machine environments as well as dynamic environments wherethe sensor nodes are carried by humans. Higher demands are put on real-timetracking algorithms of the sensor nodes, both in terms of accuracy and speed.

This thesis addresses the issue of tracking persons wearing small sensor nodeswithin a radio network. Focus lies on fusing sensor data in an efficient way withconsideration to the computationally constrained sensor nodes. Different sensorsare stochastically modelled, evaluated, and fused to form an estimate of the person’sposition.

The central approach to solve the problem is to use a dead reckoning methodby detecting steps taken by the wearer combined with an Inertial MeasurementUnit to calculate the heading of the person wearing the sensor node. To decreasethe unavoidable drift which is associated with a dead reckoning algorithm, a mapis successfully fused with the dead reckoning algorithm. The information from themap can to a large extent remove drift.

The developed system can successfully track a person wearing a sensor nodein an office environment across multiple floors. This is done with only minorknowledge about the initial conditions for the user. The system can recover fromdivergence situations which increases the long term reliability.