Fusing Geomagnetism and RF for Indoor Localization

MPhil Thesis Defence


Title: "Fusing Geomagnetism and RF for Indoor Localization"

By

Mr. Hang WU


Abstract

Geomagnetic field is highly applicable to indoor localization due to its 
pervasive spatial presence, high signal stability and infrastructureless 
support. Previous work in the area often fuses it with a pedometer (step 
counter) via particles. These approaches are computationally intensive and 
require strong assumptions on user behavior. To overcome the weaknesses, we 
propose Magil, a pedometer-free approach leveraging upon magnetic fi eld for 
indoor localization. To the best of our knowledge, this is the fi rst piece of 
work using geomagnetism for smartphone localization without a pedometer. Magil 
is applicable to any open or complex indoor environment. Meanwhile, Magil can 
also incorporate Wi-Fi signals to achieve much improved localization accuracy 
for indoor environments with Wi-Fi infrastructures. In the offline phase, with 
a surveyor walking prede fined paths covering the indoor area, it continuously 
collects and stores geomagnetic and opportunistic Wi-Fi RSSI fingerprints. In 
the online phase, it identifi es the indoor segments whose fingerprint 
variations match highly with the target observations. With a modi fied shortest 
path formulation, Magil selects and connects these matched segments and obtains 
the target locations and paths. We have implemented Magil, and conducted 
extensive experiments on our university campus. Our results show that Magil 
outperforms many state-of-the-art schemes by a wide margin (cutting 
localization error by more than 30% on average).


Date:			Friday, 30 June 2017

Time:			3:00pm - 5:00pm

Venue:			Room 2612B
 			Lifts 31/32

Committee Members:	Prof. Gary Chan (Supervisor)
 			Dr. Raymond Wong (Chairperson)
 			Dr. Pan Hui


**** ALL are Welcome ****