Because of the high calculation cost and poor performance of a traditional planar map when dealing with complicated indoor geographic information, a WiFi fingerprint indoor positioning system cannot be widely employed on a smartphone platform. By making full use of the hardware sensors embedded in the smartphone, this study proposes an integrated approach to a three-dimensional (3D) indoor positioning system. First, an improved K-means clustering method is adopted to reduce the fingerprint database retrieval time and enhance positioning efficiency. Next, with the mobile phone’s acceleration sensor, a new step counting method based on auto-correlation analysis is proposed to achieve cell phone inertial navigation positioning. Furthermore, the integration of WiFi positioning with Pedestrian Dead Reckoning (PDR) obtains higher positional accuracy with the help of the Unscented Kalman Filter algorithm. Finally, a hybrid 3D positioning system based on Unity 3D, which can carry out real-time positioning for targets in 3D scenes, is designed for the fluent operation of mobile terminals.

Ultra-wideband (UWB) sensor technology is known to achieve high-precision indoor localization accuracy in line-of-sight (LOS) environments, but its localization accuracy and stability suffer detrimentally in non-line-of-sight (NLOS) conditions. Current NLOS/LOS identification based on channel impulse response’s (CIR) characteristic parameters (CCP) improves location accuracy, but most CIR-based identification approaches did not sufficiently exploit the CIR information and are environment specific. This paper derives three new CCPs and proposes a novel two-step identification/classification methodology with dynamic threshold comparison (DTC) and the fuzzy credibility-based support vector machine (FC-SVM). The proposed SVM based classification methodology leverages on the derived CCPs obtained from the waveform and its channel analysis, which are more robust to environment and obstacles dynamic. This is achieved in two-step with a coarse-grained NLOS/LOS identification with the DTC strategy followed by FC-SVM to give the fine-grained result. Finally, based on the obtained identification results, a real-time ranging error mitigation strategy is then designed to improve the ranging and localization accuracy. Extensive experimental campaigns are conducted in different LOS/NLOS scenarios to evaluate the proposed methodology. The results show that the mean LOS/NLOS identification accuracy in various testing scenarios is 93.27 %, and the LOS and NLOS recalls are 94.27 % and 92.57 %, respectively. The ranging errors in LOS(NLOS) conditions are reduced from 0.106 m(1.442 m) to 0.065 m(0.739 m), demonstrating an improvement of 38.85 %(48.74 %) with 0.041 m(0.703 m) error reduction. On the other hand, the average positioning accuracy is also reduced from 0.250 m to 0.091 m with an improvement of 63.49 %(0.159 m), which outperforms the state-of-the-art approaches of the Least-squares support vector machine (LS-SVM) and K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) algorithms.

The increasingly intensive and extensive coal mining activities on the Loess Plateau pose a threat to the fragile local ecosystems. Quantifying the effects of coal mining activities on environmental conditions is of great interest for restoring and managing the local ecosystems and resources. This paper generates dense NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) time series between 2000 and 2011 at a spatial resolution of 30 m by blending Landsat and MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) data using the Spatial and Temporal Adaptive Reflectance Fusion Model (STARFM) and further evaluates its capability for mapping vegetation trends around a typical coalfield on the Loss Plateau. Synthetic NDVI images were generated using (1) STARFM-generated NIR (near infrared) and red band reflectance data (scheme 1) and (2) Landsat and MODIS NDVI images directly as inputs for STARFM (scheme 2). By comparing the synthetic NDVI images with the corresponding Landsat NDVI, we found that scheme 2 consistently generated better results (0.70 < R² < 0.76) than scheme 1 (0.56 < R² < 0.70) in this study area. Trend analysis was then performed with the synthetic dense NDVI time series and the annual maximum NDVI (NDVI_max) time series. The accuracy of these trends was evaluated by comparing to those from the corresponding MODIS time series, and it was concluded that both the trends from synthetic/MODIS NDVI dense time series and synthetic/MODIS NDVI_max time series (2000–2011) were highly consistent. Compared to trends from MODIS time series, trends from synthetic time series are better able to capture fine scale vegetation changes. STARFM-generated synthetic NDVI time series could be used to quantify the effects of mining activities on vegetation, but the test areas should be selected with caution, as the trends derived from synthetic and MODIS time series may be significantly different in some areas.

In recent years, many new technologies have been used in indoor positioning. In 2016, IEEE 802.11-2016 created a Wi-Fi fine timing measurement (FTM) protocol, making Wi-Fi ranging more robust and accurate, and providing meter-level positioning accuracy. However, the accuracy of positioning methods based on the new ranging technology is influenced by non-line-of-sight (NLOS) errors. To enhance the accuracy, a positioning method with LOS (line-of-sight)/NLOS identification is proposed in this paper. A Gaussian model has been established to identify NLOS signals. After identifying and discarding NLOS signals, the least square (LS) algorithm is used to calculate the location. The results of the numerical experiments indicate that our algorithm can identify and discard NLOS signals with a precision of 83.01% and a recall of 74.97%. Moreover, compared with the traditional algorithms, by all ranging results, the proposed method features more accurate and stable results for indoor positioning.

The smartphone-based Wi-Fi fine time measurement (FTM) technique has provided a new approach for Wi-Fi-based indoor location on mobile phones since the 2018 release of the Google Android Pie system, which supports the IEEE 802.11-2016 protocol and can directly measure the distance between the initiator and the responder. This paper studies in detail the properties of mobile phone Wi-Fi ranging and positioning performance. Considering non-line-of-sight (NLOS) error identification, a real-time ranging error compensation model based on the least-squares (LS) method and an adaptive Wi-Fi FTM positioning algorithm (AWFP) utilizing the weighted least-squares (WLS) method are devised. To improve accuracy, a new tightly coupled fusion positioning algorithm integrating Wi-Fi FTM and built-in mobile phone sensors based on the extended Kalman filter (EKF) is constructed. The experimental results show that the ranging precision and Wi-Fi positioning accuracy are improved. Based on the high-precision Wi-Fi ranging and positioning results, the final location accuracy of the proposed fusion method is 0.98 m, and the root-mean-square error (RMSE) is 1.10 m, which are better than those of the PDR, Wi-Fi FTM and loosely coupled PDR/Wi-Fi FTM integration based on the EKF.