Positioning Vectors for Mobile Ad-Hoc Positioning

Abstract

In recent years, there has been considerable interest in indoor positioning with the advent of smartphones. Conventional indoor positioning methods are mostly infrastructure-based and non-collaborative. With the recent development of Ultra-WideBand (UWB) technologies, highly accurate distance and orientation detection have become available for supporting collaborative positioning, a new positioning paradigm. Hence there is a strong need to study collaborative positioning, which is referred to in this paper as mobile ad-hoc positioning (MAP). To contribute to the development of MAP, we present novel positioning vectors with the potential to tackle many related collaborative positioning problems and open an interesting area of research. Our contributions are outlined as follows. First, we present the concept of positioning vectors with the foundational features. Second, we present both experimental and simulation results, illustrating the use of positioning vectors. In particular, we discuss a COVID-19 related case study on social distancing. Last but not least, we discuss the future research directions of positioning vectors. In summary, this paper provides valuable insights into the development of MAP in general and positioning vectors in particular.