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Wireless Local Positioning System
Wireless Local Positioning System
CHAPTER 1:
INTRODUCTION
Positioning systems determine the location of a person or an object either relative to a known
position or within a coordinate system. In the last few decades, various positioning systems have
been motivated by demand and have been developed. Some of the applications of positioning
systems include law enforcement, security, road safety, tracking personnel, vehicles and other
assets, situation awareness and mobile networks.
As shown in figure 1.1 positioning systems can be classified into two categories:
1. Global Positioning
2. Local Positioning
Global positioning systems (GPS) allow each mobile to find its own position on the globe.
A local positioning system (LPS) is a relative positioning system and can be classified into self
and remote positioning. Self-positioning systems allow each person or object to find its own
position with respect to a static point at any given time and location. An example of these
systems is the inertial navigation system (INS).
Remote positioning systems allow each node to find the relative position of the other nodes
located in its coverage area. Here, nodes can be static or dynamic. Remote positioning systems
themselves are divided into two parts:
In the first case, the target is active and cooperates in the process of positioning, while in the
second, the target is passive and noncooperative. Examples of active target positioning systems
are radio frequency identification (RFID), wireless local positioning systems (WLPS), traffic
alert and collision avoidance systems (TCAS). Examples of passive target positioning systems
are tracking radars and vision systems.
CHAPTER 2:
RTOF measurements follow the path of direct distance measurement using two-way
communication between the units. One unit sends an interrogating signal to one or more units in
range and they reply with their independent ID encoded in the signal [8-9]. Like this the distance
is estimated from the round-trip time-of-flight. This approach requires some background
communication to handle the setup of the measurement. Additionally all mobile entities must
measure sequentially, degrading the measurement rate when more units are involved. On the
other side, all information is generated locally, thus enabling sensor fusion. Furthermore, because
absolute distances are computed many applications outside the standard areas are possible, e.g.
direct distance measurements between mobile units or operation with a single line of units as
fixed infrastructure.
Table 2.1
CHAPTER 3:
The standard access points usually use dipoles antenna. In the real world the electromagnetic
field’s shape doesn’t look exactly as the fig 3.2 due to reflection, refraction, attenuation and
noise. For any type of wireless communication the signal disperses with the distance. An antenna
will receive less signal power the father is from the transmitting antenna. This is known as “free
spaceloss" which can be expressed for the ideal isotropic
For our case is important the relative distance from the antenna position in each direction. The
relative distance determines the signal power at the receiver. The signal power at the receiver is
measured by the wireless card. Using these measured values we try to inference the relative
distance from each antenna.
Fig 3.3 RSSI from two APs placed in the same location in the same time (802.1lg standard)
The same result was obtained also for the 802.1la standard, but in this case the differences
between devices are not so large (Fig. 3.4)
Fig3.4 RSSI from two APs placed in the same location in the same time (802.1la standard)
Averaging the measured values for both devices and standards used we obtained the chart in
Fig3.5
Fig.3.5 Average RSSI from two APs placed in the same location in the same time
As a first conclusion we can say that before WPS implementation a equipment selection phase is
needed, in order to select the proper devices for the system. After this test case we conclude that
AP-g-241 it is not recommended to be used in WPS due to its large standard deviation of the
measured RSSI. A second recommendation is to use 802.1 la standard in WPS or both A and G
standards for a better accuracy, due to smaller deviations obtained for 802.1 la in our tests.
Differences in RSSI measurement can be also observed, on both standards (802.11a and
802.11g), between daily hours and night hours (Fig 3.4). In daily hours the room was used by
people working in the lab and students, therefore the received signal has more perturbations.
Better results are obtained in the night when no interferences and reflections will occur.
Between the two rooms in the lab there is a door. Another test was run with the door open and
then closed (Fig 3.6). Surprising in all our tests with the door closed better results were obtained.
device sysup time (the number of hours from starting the device);
weather conditions (temperature, humidity, etc.)
In conclusion we showed through this second test case that a large number of uncontrolled
external parameters have influence on the RSSI measurements. All these influences and
parameters are very hard to be expressed in the mathematical model. Therefore a solution for this
drawback is to place one or more fixed signal receivers called reference devices, in well known
positions. These devices will monitor the RSSI from all Aps and will introduce a control
loopback for the system.
In this test case we tried to show the relation between AP antenna orientation and position and
the measured RSSI. The APs antenna positions were rotated at 900 in clock sense and for each
position we logged 30 minutes of measurements. The average values for the four positions are
presented in Fig 3.8. With this test we tried to find the proper APs positions and orientations.
In some situations the measurements of different distances are overlapped. These test case is
intended to estimate the accuracy of the system with respect to the selected devices and
positions.
Fig 3.10 RSSI from the same AP placed in three different locations
CHAPTER 4:
1. A base station that can be carried by a mobile unit, e.g., spacecraft; that is called
dynamic base station (DBS)
• In this system, each DBS is capable of localizing all other TRXes via direction-of-arrival
(DOA) and time-of-arrival (TOA) measurements.
• The DBS receiver measures TOAs and computes the distances to the other nodes. The
period of WLPS signal broadcasts can be adaptively adjusted to meet the required
positioning updating rate: As the period of transmissions decreases, the positioning
updating rate increases.
• Antenna arrays installed at the DBS receiver measure the DOA of signals transmitted by
a TRX. In addition, antenna arrays create directionality via beamforming techniques. This
reduces interference effects and improves the performance of the proposed system.
• WLPS periodically attain positioning data. This enables us to apply the positioning
results to an EKF (Extended Kalman Filter) in order to improve localization performance.
CHAPTER 5:
• The standard Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) is implemented for relative position
estimation between spacecraft. Here, the general equations of EKF for the scenarios and
cases are derived.
• Consider the two body motion; the dynamic motion of each spacecraft corresponds to :
CHAPTER 6:
100 meters in urban areas. Implementing local positioning solutions on standard WLAN
communication systems as DECT, WLAN802.11 or Bluetooth is very attractive. Mutual synergy
between the positioning and the communication system is present. Some years ago the Microsoft
Research Group introduced their so called RADAR system which is a RRS positioning systems
based on WLAN components. TDOA solutions based on DSSS or OFDM WLAN were reported
by Lietal. Further on in this article the Siemens NCPS solution will he described which is an RSS
system either DECT or WLAN802.11 based. Intense activities with respect to local positioning
can also be observed in the Bluetooth community. A local positioning working group within
the Bluetooth special interest group defined the related standards (www.bluetooth.org). The
microcellular structure of a Bluetooth network allows to localize a Bluetooth device very
easily with an accuracy related to the size of the piconet. To increase the accuracy the usual
WLAN RSS evaluation concepts can be used. The accuracy of typical WLAN positioning
systems is approx. 3 to 30 m, with an update rate in the range of some seconds. Some proprietary
solutions such as the 3D-ID system from PinPoint or the TDOA system from Where Net have
similar performance as the WLAN systems mentioned above. However, the specially designed
hardware and a protocol with longer power down periods allows for minimal power consumption
in the mobile devices and thus these products mainly address the typical transponder market and
not WLAN data services. As depicted in Figure 6.1 a technology barrier can be defined between
precision positioning systems that provide an accuracy significantly better than 1m and the less
accurate systems. For many tracking, routing and guiding applications a moderate accuracy is
sufficient. However, quite a few areas like automation and control require much higher accuracy.
Up to now only proprietary broadband microwave systems can offer this accuracy. Future Ultra
Wideband (UWB) WLAN systems will very likely be able to provide precise local positioning
information. Several proprietary UWB local positioning systems are already available today.
However, with the severe power restrictions of the current FCC UWB regulation mainly short
range solutions are feasible. One of the most powerful wireless local positioning systems
available today has been developed by the Austrian Company ABATEC. This system called
LPM was especially designed for sports applications. For less cost sensitive applications it offers
a wide range of more than 500 m, a high update rate of less than 1 ms , and cm-precision.
A similar update rate and accuracy is achieved by the Siemens local positioning- radar LPR that
was recently launched for industrial applications like crane and forklift positioning. This system
was designed under the guideline of minimal installation, infrastructure and maintenance cost.
CHAPTER 7 :
APPLICATIONS
In this section three different application examples are introduced, each representing different
requirements like low energy consumption, many mobile units or special geometric conditioning
due to infrastructure restraints.
Asset tracking has been one of the earliest applications of wireless positioning. Tracking of
valuable assets in hospitals, tracking of manufacturing equipment or production lots in large
plants, and tracking of life-stock inventory all require power-efficient and cost-effective mobile
units. On the other hand, response time is not important, accuracy in the meter range is usually
sufficient, and sensor fusion is not an issue. Consequently either RSS or TDOA systems are
used.
Tracking of vehicles or people in outdoor applications has different constraints than indoor
tracking. The signal propaga-tion is significantly better and mounting possibilities are limited or
not available. This leads to fairly large cells and thus to a drastic increase of the number of
participants within the cell. Furthermore, vehicle speed requires frequent updates and short
response times, and sensor fusion is an issue due to obstruction within the large cell, e.g. cranes
in harbors or building remainders in mobile disaster recovery and rescue systems like I-LOV.
For these systems the ITDOA approach is preferred, mainly because an arbitrary number of
participants can be served at the same update rate, no communication backbone is needed and
sensor fusion can be used to overcome localization gaps. Fig. 7.2 shows the position of a mobile
unit in an ITDOA test cell.
Crane tracking has been another pioneer application for wireless local positioning. Typically,
both sides of the crane track are equipped with fixed units and the position is computed on the
mobile unit on the crane [1]. In this setup the geometrical conditioning along the track is very
good, and TDOA, ITDOA and RTOF can be used with similar performance. However, in many
cases it is not possible to mount units on both sides. With single-sided operation the geometrical
conditioning for TDOA and ITDOA is very poor and only RTOF solutions provide sufficient
accuracy. Figure 8 compares the simulated accuracy of RTOF and ITDOA. Similar disturbance
has been assumed for distance and distance difference measurements. It is obvious that RTOF
has a tenfold performance advantage for this special case
Fig 7.3 Accuracy for a line of fixed units at 20, 40, 60, 80 m for
a) RTOF operation
b) ITDOA operation
CHAPTER 8:
SUMMARY
A new sensor called WLPS that facilitates relative localization was introduced. An overview
over the different system topologies and the respective applications has been given. The selected
applications show that at the moment two main system types exist: Centralized systems with
mobile units of limited intelligence and low battery consumption mainly for asset and people
tracking at lower precision and decentralized systems with local intelligence for more
sophisticated tracking applications and automation at high precision, often including sensor
fusion. However, the gap between the two approaches is already shrinking: Asset and people
tracking systems tend to add new functionalities to the tag, including inertial sensor and two-way
radios, while at the other end decentralized systems reduce their power consumption and size.
Basic principles and exemplary solutions for modem wireless local positioning systems have
been demonstrated, and an insight into the huge application field of wireless local positioning
systems has been provided. Local positioning will have a strong, lasting impact on the
application of wireless systems and it will evoke paradigm changes in many areas.
REFERENCE
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APPENDIX