Platform Architecture for Decentralized Positioning Systems

Abstract

A platform architecture for positioning systems is essential for the realization of a flexible localization system, which interacts with other systems and supports various positioning technologies and algorithms. The decentralized processing of a position enables pushing the application-level knowledge into a mobile station and avoids the communication with a central unit such as a server or a base station. In addition, the calculation of the position on low-cost and resource-constrained devices presents a challenge due to the limited computing, storage capacity, as well as power supply. Therefore, we propose a platform architecture that enables the design of a system with the reusability of the components, extensibility (e.g., with other positioning technologies) and interoperability. Furthermore, the position is computed on a low-cost device such as a microcontroller, which simultaneously performs additional tasks such as data collecting or preprocessing based on an operating system. The platform architecture is designed, implemented and evaluated on the basis of two positioning systems: a field strength system and a time of arrival-based positioning system.

Collaborative Indoor Positioning Systems: A Systematic Review

“…Regarding the infrastructure, literature generally distinguishes between infrastructureless and infrastructure-based IPS [63][64][65][66]. The infrastructure-less systems do not require to deploy any infrastructure in the area to operate, e.g., IPSs based on magnetic field [66].…”

“…The infrastructure-less systems do not require to deploy any infrastructure in the area to operate, e.g., IPSs based on magnetic field [66]. In contrast, infrastructure-based IPSs require an infrastructure to operate, i.e., one or more physical elements deployed in the environment [63,65,66] (e.g., BLE beacons or ultrasound receivers). To differentiate the systems where infrastructure needs to be purposely deployed versus systems that use existing infrastructure (i.e., signals of opportunity), some authors identified an in-between class: opportunistic IPS [67][68][69].…”

“…In a centralized architecture [72,78,82], the nodes/actors collect the unprocessed data from the sensors, which are sent to a central node that calculates the position estimate of all nodes. In a decentralized architecture [19,65,72,77,78,82], the role of nodes consists of acquiring and sharing (raw or processed) relevant data, but also in processing them in order to, for instance, self-determine their position. In both cases, the final position of a device is collaboratively estimated using the data and information provided by that and other devices.…”

RcdMathLib: An Open Source Software Library for Computing on Resource-Limited Devices

“…The trilateration algorithm computes the position of an unknown point with the coordinates and distances to the reference positions for . This problem requires the estimation of a vector such that: where the matrix and the vector have the following forms [ 46 , 47 , 48 ]: …”

Machine learning based obstacle detection for Automatic Train Pairing

“…The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the utility of such an integrated communications system (P440 from TimeDomain) that performs realtime ranging and can simultaneously operate as a monostatic radar. The ranging performance of P440 has been investiagated in many prior works and was shown to achieve accuracies in the range of 2-10 cm [5]. In this paper, we limit our investigation to obstacle detection using P440 as a monostatic radar.…”