Simultaneous distance measurement and information transmission in mobile environment using digital acoustic communication

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the feasibility of indoor acoustic positioning by measuring transmission distance and speed while simultaneously transmitting information using digital acoustic communication. The method we propose applies orthogonal signal division multiplexing, computes the channel impulse response in the delay-Doppler domain, and calculates the moving speed of the receiver and the time of flight to estimate the distance between the transmitter and receiver. Experiments confirm that the proposed method can estimate relative velocity and distance with errors of up to 6 mm s−1 and 34 mm, respectively, even when the signal power-to-noise power ratio drops to about 0 dB, while transmitting messages of up to 254 bits.