Accurate indoor localization and tracking using mobile phone inertial sensors, WiFi and iBeacon

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a robust and accurate indoor localization and tracking system using smartphone built-in inertial measurement unit (IMU) sensors, WiFi received signal strength measurements and opportunistic iBeacon corrections based on particle filter. We utilize Pedestrian Dead Reckoning (PDR) approach which leverages smartphone equipped accelerometers, gyroscope and magnetometer to estimate the walking distance and direction of user. The position estimated by WiFi fingerprinting based approach is fused with PDR to reduce its drifting error. Since the number of WiFi routers is usually limited for localization in large-scale indoor environment, we employ the emerging iBeacon technology to occasionally correct the drifting error of PDR in poor WiFi coverage area. Extensive experiments have been conducted and verified the superiority of the proposed system in terms of localization accuracy and robustness.