Accurate 3D Localization for 60 GHz Networks

Abstract

RF-based (mainly Wi-Fi and BLE) localization systems have been gaining the significant amount of attention from industry, since they do not require the deployment of any special and costly infrastructure such as cameras and depth sensors but leverage existing wireless Access Points (APs) and mobile clients. However, extensive field trials have shown that such solutions can be inaccurate (e.g., meter-level localization error) and/or impractical (e.g., requiring centrally-controlled, dense AP deployments). In this paper, we focus on millimeter-wave wireless networks, which are becoming increasingly popular for both indoors and outdoors connectivity, to overcome the aforementioned limitations and to provide accurate 3D localization. Specifically, we propose mWaveLoc, a system that exploits the small wavelength (millimeter) and directional communication of millimeter-wave (e.g., in 60 GHz) networks for accurate and practical 3D localization. mWaveLoc relies only on a single AP to track a device's position and works with existing off-the-shelf 802.11ad 60 GHz devices. Our implementation and experimental results on commodity 802.11ad testbeds show that mWaveLoc can achieve centimeter-level AP-client distance estimation accuracy and decimeter-level 3D localization accuracy in Line-Of-Sight settings.