Acoustic Local Positioning System Using An iOS Device: Conference Paper
Acoustic Local Positioning System Using An iOS Device: Conference Paper
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Abstract—This work benefits from the capability of the Magnetic Indoor Positioning System (MILPS) [3] [4] which
iPhone’s or iPad’s microphone to acquire high-frequency sound uses artificial magnetic fields generated by coils for ranging
for accurate acoustic code identification. Although the maximum between multiple coils and a mobile station equipped with a
theoretical value for the frequency response of the built-in iOS
device microphone is 20 kHz, emissions with frequencies close to magnetic sensor. Other option is to use Bluetooth receivers [5],
22 kHz have been experimentally detected. The frequencies used which are integrated in many mobile devices, but unfortunately
in this work are in the range from 18 to 22 kHz, which are high access to it is often limited by the operating system.
enough to be inaudible for almost every people but low enough A different approach is to use position information deduced
to be generated by standard sound hardware. from a combination of Global Navigation Satellite System
The aim of this work is to develop an inexpensive indoor
positioning system where the user gets its location by using an (GNSS) where available, combined with Pedestrian Dead
iOS device’s microphone. For this purpose a third-generation Reckoning (PDR) utilizing inertial measurements and context-
iPad is used for high-frequency sound data acquisition and aware activity based map matching [6] [7]. Unluckily experi-
neither external acquisition system nor ultrasonic microphone ments have shown that several sources of error accumulation
are required. exist, being the most important the heading error.
The capability of iOS devices to acquire acoustic signals in the
vicinity of 20 kHz has been successfully demonstrated. This fact Other works [8]–[10] propose the use of WiFi signals to
allows the use of this kind of device for acoustic code detection perform such a localization, but absorption and reflection ge-
and accurate positioning by means of multilateration. nerate confusion [11] and the required WiFi parameters cannot
Keywords. Local Positioning System; iOS Device; Kasami always be accessed on modern phones operating systems.
Codes; CDMA; Objective-C Application. An attractive possibility is to triangulate the device position
using ultrasonic signals [12]–[15]. These works use frequen-
I. I NTRODUCTION AND RELATED WORKS cies and algorithms which require special hardware on the
Everybody is aware about the growing spread and compu- client side. A compromise is the use of ultrasonic frequencies
tational power of mobile phones and the rising number of close to the human perceiving threshold (i. e. around 20 kHz)
applications (apps) we find in app stores, full of different to identify the presence of a beacon sender [16]. Taking into
location-based apps such as restaurant finders, tourist guides account that audio recording is a standard smartphone feature,
and navigation systems, etc. Since smartphones and wireless and that smartphone microphones are capable to sense sound
Internet connection became ubiquitous in the last years, lo- on ultrasonic frequencies close to 22 kHz, this work presents
cation based interaction, supported via the Global Positioning an approach for inexpensive and easy indoor positioning which
System (GPS) or WiFi identification has become a standard can be carried out with the help of a mobile device or tablet
pattern for mobile phone usage. using its built-in microphone as receiver [17]. The positioning
Nowadays most smartphones are equipped with a GPS algorithm can be implemented locally on the user’s device, if
receiver, which raises costs and increases the energy con- a particular set of signals and their origin positions (beacons)
sumption. Unfortunately, GPS is not able to track people in are known to the device. This requires the device to access a
indoor environments with acceptable accuracy [1]. Signals beacon map, which must be maintained for every site.
might get lost due to attenuation effects of roofs and walls or The purpose of this work is to use the good correlation and
lead to position fixes of very low accuracy due to multipath cross-correlation properties of Kasami codes [18] for indoor
propagation. Therefore, GPS is not a good option for indoor sound multilateration positioning. At the same time, ultrasonic
location currently. signals can be used to sense the proximity of a beacon, offering
Works as the one presented in [2] propose a system based useful information related with beacon’s location. In this case,
on infrared receivers (IR), distributed inside the building, errors should not exceed a few meters, otherwise, the service
and a device sending IR signals. Unfortunately, smartphones could provide information for places which are quite far away
generally do not integrate an IR emitter, a complex and costly from the actual position of the target.
infrastructure has to be built. The same problem presents
A statistical study of the positioning errors have been also Moreover, Point 2 has worse results than Point 3 but slightly
carried out. Fig. 11, shows the CDF of the error measured in better than Point 1. Both cases, Point 1 and 2, the errors for
the five test points for the three coordinates. the three coordinates are lower than 0.30 meters with a 100 %
of probability, however Point 2 is more likely to have a lower
magnitude of the error.
On the other hand, Point 4 and 5 have worse results than the
first three points, especially Point 4. This point is located near a
corner, therefore is strongly affected by multipath propagation.
Multipath is the most dominant error source for positioning
because it has a large influence on the positioning accuracy
due to the received signals are disturbed by reflections. This
can lead to a large bias in the user’s TOF value. As shown the
CDF graph of the error for Point 4, the results obtained are
clearly inaccurate, especially for the y coordinate, where 0.9
meter errors exist in some cases.
Finally the results obtained for Point 5 are also quite
imprecise. This time the source of error is the near-far effect
due to the proximity between the Beacon 1 and the receiver.
The result shows that exists errors lower than about 0.6 meters
for the y coordinate with a 100% of probability.
As said, near-far effect is produced when the receiver cap-
tures a strong signal provenient from a close beacon and makes
impossible the detection of other weaker signals provenient
from the rest of the beacons. When this phenomenon happens,
the peak of correlation corresponding with the code which is
emitted by the closer beacon to the receiver, presents a clearly
higher value. Fig. 12 despicted this phenomenon when occurs
in Point 5.
According to Fig. 11, the first three points present the best
results, with error less than 0.3 m in all cases for the three
coordinates. Fig. 12. Near-far effect in Point 5.
As expected, Point 3 presents the lowest error of the five
points because is less affected by multipath and the near-
far effect than the rest of the points. Looking into its CDF, Although this phenomenon causes errors in the determina-
it can be observed that a 100% of probability exists that tion of the TOF, this fact can be exploited to detect the user
the measurements have errors below 0.10 meters for x, z proximity to the beacon. Also, the beacon’s location could be
coordinates, and 70% for y coordinate. related with useful information for the user, providing him
Location-Based Services (LBS).
2013 International Conference on Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation, 28th -31th October 2013
E. User Inteface After data acquisition and processing to calculate the po-
sition of the user, this information is displayed through an
user interface. The interface consists of two tabs, which are
illustrated in Figs. 13 and 14.
The first tab shown in Fig. 13 describes the plane of the
laboratory where the tests are performed. The location of the
beacons (gray squares), and the estimated position of the user
(cyan cross) can be distinguished at every moment. Also a
Start/Stop button and another Exit button are necessary to
handle the application.
On the second tab shown in Fig. 14, the user can receive
information when being close to one of the beacons. This
tab consists of a User Interface Web View (UIWebView), a
Start/Stop button, controls for surfing the internet and finally
an Exit button. As shown in this figure, the iPad has detected
the emission of Code 1. The speaker which emits Code 1 is
supposed to be near the painting associated with this code,
i.e. The Gioconda. After detection of Code 1, the application
load a URL where the user is informed about the painting of
The Mona Lisa. When the user approaches another picture,
a new code is detected and inmediatly the iPad will display
information via web page regarding the new painting, since
every code has associated its own URL address.
V. C ONCLUSIONS AND F URTHER W ORKS
In this work the ability of iPhone or iPad to acquire ultra-
sonic signals around 20 KHz and its possible use for accurate
Fig. 13. Screenshot of the LPS user interface. ultrasonic code identifying, it has been succesfully developed.
The implementation of an ultrasonic local positioning system
has been carried out favorably. In addition, it has been made
an study on the accuracy and reliability of the system at certain
positions in the working environment. These results show that
for a total of 100 measurements in each of the positions
studied, the error vary between 0.03 and 0.9 meters in the
best and worst of the cases respectively, depending on the
user’s location. In this way for the determination of the TOF in
locations where the received signal is not affected by multipath
or / and near-far effect, the accuracy of the system significantly
improves respect to areas affected by these phenomena, such
as corners or at positions very close to the beacons or walls.
Besides, a code-detection related utility has been developed,
displaying information to the users through a web page. This
utility benefits from near-far effect to detect when the user
is close to a beacon offering him LBS related with beacon’s
location.
Facing further work we are developing improvements re-
lated with emitted codes from the point of view of dynamic
thresholding, as well as their Doppler effect tolerance when
the users are moving.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work has been supported jointly by the University
of Extremadura through its Aid Program for Initiation in
Research (ACCVII-11), and the Spanish Ministry of Econo-
my and Competitiveness, through the project LORIS-UEx
Fig. 14. Screenshot of the LBS user interface. (TIN2012-38080-C04-02).
2013 International Conference on Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation, 28th -31th October 2013
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