Robust Positioning Performance in Indoor Environments

¹ School of Science, RMIT University, City Campus, Melbourne, Australia
² Department of Geodesy and Geoinformation, TU Wien, Gusshausstrasse 27-29, 1040 Vienna, Austria
³ Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
⁴ French Civil Aviation University, Toulouse, France
⁵ Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India

^* Corresponding author: guenther.retscher@tuwien.ac.at

Abstract

Increasingly, safety and liability critical applications require GNSS-like positioning metrics in environments where GNSS cannot work. Indoor navigation for the vision impaired and other mobility restricted individuals, emergency responders and asset tracking in buildings demand levels of positioning accuracy and integrity that cannot be satisfied by current indoor positioning technologies and techniques. This paper presents the challenges facing positioning technologies for indoor positioning and presents innovative algorithms and approaches that aim to enhance performance in these difficult environments. The overall aim is to achieve GNSS-like performance in terms of autonomous, global, infrastructure free, portable and cost efficient. Preliminary results from a real-world experimental campaign conducted as part of the joint FIG Working Group 5.5 and IAG Sub-commission 4.1 on multi-sensor systems, demonstrate performance improvements based on differential Wi-Fi (DWi-Fi) and cooperative positioning techniques. The techniques, experimental schema and initial results will be fully documented in this paper.