Camera-aided region-based magnetic field indoor positioning

Abstract

It has been shown that local magnetic field (MF) anomalies can be used in accurate global self-localisation with fingerprinting. However, MF anomalies can only affect limited areas, and the low discernibility of received local MF signals may result in many positions having the same MF-Location information in areas far away from disturbances. This is mainly due to the sensitivity limitations of sensors embedded in mobile phones. This makes it challenging to distinguish between different positions with the same MF value. To address this problem, this paper proposes a new camera-assisted region-based MF fingerprinting technique, which takes maximum advantage of MF-based indoor positioning. Unlike using MF positioning alone for the whole training space, the basic idea of this multipronged system is to use camera-based positioning in areas with fewer disturbances to assist MF positioning targeting attaining a more location estimates. We have calculated the accuracy rate of the proposed system and compared it with MF-only and camera-only localisation systems. The results suggest that the proposed system performs significantly better than these two systems.