OpArray: Exploiting Array Orientation for Accurate Indoor Localization

Abstract

Signal processing on antenna arrays has recently received extensive attention in the area of angle-of-arrival (AoA)-based indoor localization. Although sufficient array elements can improve the resolution in the AoA estimation, the array orientation has not been well exploited in research into the localization performance. In this paper, we investigate the effect of array orientations on the performance of AoA-based indoor localization systems. Appropriate array orientation can efficiently reduce the uncertainty in AoA estimation, thereby improving the localization accuracy. Accordingly, we present OpArray, an accurate indoor localization system based on flexible array deployment. First, OpArray designs an array deployment scheme, which establishes the foundation for accurate AoA estimates. The deployment scheme can be easily implemented through array rotations so as to optimize array orientations at receivers. Second, OpArray incorporates two refined phase preprocessing algorithms to mitigate the impact of negative factors, which exist in the practical implementation. In addition, aided by an improved AoA estimation algorithm, OpArray can localize a target on commercial off-the-shelf Wi-Fi platforms. Our experiments in a multipath-rich indoor environment show that OpArray achieves a median localization error of 0.5 m and the 80th percentile error is 1.0 m, which outperforms the state-of-the-art localization systems.