Abstract
In this paper we present a user-centric position sensing system that is based on asynchronous, independent ultrasonic beacons. These stationary transmitter units are small, cheap to manufacture, and have power requirements low enough to run each from a small solar cell and a nearby light source. Each beacon is programmed to emit a short, 40 kHz ultrasonic signal with a unique transmission period. The mobile receiver unit first associates a received signal with a beacon based on the observed periodicity, then measures the Doppler shift in the periodicity that results from movements of the receiver. Using Doppler shifts from a number of different beacons, the receiver is able to estimate both its position and velocity by employing a particle filter. In this paper, we describe our positioning algorithm, the hardware, and proof-of-concept results.
Funding for this work is received from the U.K. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council as part of the Equator IRC, GR-N-15986.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
LaMarca, A., Chawathe, Y., Consolvo, S., Hightower, J., Smith, I., Scott, J., Sohn, T., Howard, J., Hughes, J., Potter, F., Tabert, J., Powledge, P.S., Borriello, G., Schilit, B.N.: Place Lab: Device Positioning Using Radio Beacons in the Wild. In: Gellersen, H.-W., Want, R., Schmidt, A. (eds.) PERVASIVE 2005. LNCS, vol. 3468, pp. 116–133. Springer, Heidelberg (2005)
Ward, A., Jones, A., Hopper, A.: A New Location Technique for the Active Office. IEEE Personnel Communications 4(5), 42–47 (1997)
Hazas, M., Ward, A.: A Novel Broadband Ultrasonic Location System. In: Borriello, G., Holmquist, L.E. (eds.) UbiComp 2002. LNCS, vol. 2498, pp. 264–280. Springer, Heidelberg (2002)
McCarthy, M., Muller, H.L.: RF Free Ultrasonic Positioning. In: Seventh International Symposium on Wearable Computers, pp. 79–85. IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos (2003)
Smith, A., Balakrishnan, H., Goraczko, M., Priyantha, N.: Tracking Moving Devices with the Cricket Location System. In: Proceedings of the 2nd international conference on Mobile systems, applications, and services, pp. 190–202. ACM Press, New York (2004)
McCarthy, M., Muller, H.L.: Positioning with independent ultrasonic beacons. Technical Report CSTR-05-005, Department of Computer Science, University of Bristol (2005)
Arulampalam, M.S., Maskell, S., Gordon, N., Clapp, T.: A tutorial on particle filters for on-line non-linear/non-gaussian bayesian tracking (2002)
Kalman, R.E.: A New Approach to Linear Filtering and Prediction. Journal of Basic Engineering (ASME) 82(D), 35–45 (1960)
Welch, G., Bishop, G.: An Introduction to the Kalman Filter. In: Technical Report TR95-041, Department of Computer Science, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill (1995)
Hightower, J., Borriello, G.: Particle Filters for Location Estimation in Ubiquitous Computing: A Case Study. In: Davies, N., Mynatt, E.D., Siio, I. (eds.) UbiComp 2004. LNCS, vol. 3205, pp. 88–106. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)
Cheng, Y.C., Chawathe, Y., LaMarca, A., Krumm, J.: Accuracy characterization for metropolitan-scale Wi-Fi localization. In: MobiSys, pp. 233–245 (2005)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Muller, H.L., McCarthy, M., Randell, C. (2006). Particle Filters for Position Sensing with Asynchronous Ultrasonic Beacons. In: Hazas, M., Krumm, J., Strang, T. (eds) Location- and Context-Awareness. LoCA 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3987. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11752967_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11752967_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-34150-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-34151-2
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)