Global Positioning Systems are very accurate enough for tracking outdoors.

But the problem is,

GPS cant be used for tracking a person indoors as it doesnt give accurate results due to the
signal attenuation of the GPS signal which might get reflected when it falls on the roofs. So, it
becomes extremely indispensable to go in for a novel concept called Indoor Positioning.
Basically, Indoor Positioning can be implemented in different ways. Some of them are:
1. Wi-Fi triangulation technique where we use multiple Wi-Fi routers to triangulate at a
position to find the position of a person.
2. RF signal triangulation where we use RFID tags (emitter and detector) where the emitter
emits a signal and is detected by the detector.
3. Inertial Navigation system which uses IMU sensor to find out the position of a person by
means of Pedestrian Dead Reckoning and Zero Velocity Update Algorithms which we
had already implemented and found to give appropriate results (We have attached the
working video at the end of the document. We had implemented the same concept using
IMU and had won 3rd place in Sangam, intra collegial exhibition of NIT Trichy)
But, we had to go in for a much more accurate positioning system. We came across a concept
called Visible Light Communication which could be used for indoor positioning which gives
very precise results (according to IEEE papers)
Now, we briefly give a gist of what we had planned to execute the Problem Statement.
Here, we will make use of 2 CMOS Image sensors which we need to place at the unknown
location to receive the location information from the LED lights placed as references on the four
corners of the rooftop. Then, we need to compute the position with the help of the position
information of the reference LEDs. Then, by the help of geometry, we frame equations and
getting relationship of images from the 2 sensors. We continuously get the coordinates of the
unknown position by the light emitted by the LED on the roof.
The image sensors are made of 2D array of photosensitive elements which continuously keep
receiving light from the LEDs. Here, each element or pixel basically act as an individual photo
sensor and so, many LED light signals can be detected by a single CMOS image sensor. Two
image sensors receive the light signal of varying intensities from the four different LEDs
separated by using two separate lenses which demodulates the LEDs coordinates.
Here, in the figure above, U is the mid-point of the straight line joining the centers of the two
lenses. We find the distance of four LEDs from the point U. A, B, C and D are denoted by d1,
d2, d3 and d4, respectively with respect to the point U. The unknown 3D coordinate of the point
U(x,y,z) is estimated from d1,d2, d3,d4.

Figure 2 clearly depicts the procedure for determining the distance of the point U from an LED.
Here, the focal length of the lenses, f and the distance between the centers of the lenses, L are
known. If the distances of the image centers from the center of the image sensors are i1 and i2 ,
and their projection on the major axis of the image sensors are Pi1 and Pi2 , the distance d1 can
be calculated as follows:
Similarly, d2 , d3 and d4 can be obtained from the other three LEDs. Hence, we obtain a set of
four quadratic equations as follows:

Position Estimation

The above steps are carried out by using the Least Squares Estimation where we find the
unknown coordinates

Least Square Estimation

To estimate the 3D unknown positions, a set of three equations are sufficient if the distances
could be estimated accurately. However, due to quantization error in the pixels, exact distance
between the LED and the unknown position cannot be estimated. The intuitive solution to this
problem is to use more than three references. Mathematically, this turns the above equations into
an over-determined system of equations, termed as linear least square (LS) problem. We can
estimate the unknown position by solving the following equation for X.

2MTMX = MTD
Condition for linear LS solution is that matrix M should have full rank. However, since the
reference LEDs are in the same plane (i.e. all have same z coordinate value), this condition does
not satisfy. Hence, we add a small value with the z axis value of the fourth reference LED. Even
though this technique solves the singularity problem of matrix, we obtain an erroneous
estimation for z axis. To estimate the z axis value, we further use vector estimation. Three
reference LEDs, A, B and C are used for this estimation.

Vector Estimation
References:
1. Indoor positioning algorithm using light emitting diode visible light communications -
Zhou Zhou Mohsen Kavehrad Peng Deng
2. Indoor Positioning by LED Visible Light Communication and Image Sensors -
Mohammad Shaifur Rahman, Md. Mejbaul Haque, Ki-Doo Kim

3. A novel three-dimensional indoor positioning algorithm design based on visible light

communication - Weipeng Guana, b, Yuxiang Wua

4. A visible light communication indoor localization algorithm in rotated environments -

Jun Yan ; Bincheng Zhu

Our project on Indoor Positioning System using Inertial Sensors:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9vCW9ke8p0NaUNXWE8zMHNEcEU