The resilience of indoor localization systems is a main concern of their industrial application. A combination of different techniques can enhance the overall robustness of such systems. In this work, we present fusion possibilities of coarse Bluetooth Low Energy localization based on the received signal strength indicator and the finer ultrasound time difference of arrival (TDOA) technique. This approach offers the advantage to robustify the high-accuracy ultrasonic localization in areas with non-optimal coverage. Moreover, the data fusion enables to enhance the overall localization area in a cost effective manner. This contribution proposes and evaluates (i) novel methods of how the ultrasonic system can be extended to a constrained area and (ii) a novel possibility to incorporate available Bluetooth signal strength information in the TDOA algorithm to improve accuracy.

We revisit herein the problem of time-difference-of-arrival (TDOA) based localization under the mixed line-of-sight/non-line-of-sight propagation conditions. Adopting the strategy of statistically robustifying the non-outlier-resistant l ₂ loss, we formulate it as the minimization of a possibly non-differentiable generalized robust cost function, which is rooted in the analog locally competitive algorithm (LCA) for sparse approximation. We then present a Lagrange programming neural network to address the optimization formulation, with the non-differentiability issues being handled by grafting thereon the LCA concept of internal state dynamics. Compared with the existing algorithms, our approach is computationally less expensive, less reliant on the use of a priori error information, and observed to be capable of producing higher localization accuracy.

In this article, we propose a new robust, stable, accurate, and efficient time-delay estimation scheme for the angle-of-arrival (AoA) ultrasonic indoor single-source localization systems. The AoA technique employing microphone arrays and ultrasonic signal emitting sources has turned out to be a promising alternative to the conventional distance-based ultrawideband systems for indoor localization. The crux of AoA estimation lies in the derivation of time-delay estimates, which is typically handled by advanced digital signal processing approaches based on cross-correlation and matching algorithms. The calculation of the channel response for each received signal and the conversion from the time to the time-delay domain consent our echo suppression delay estimator (ESDE) to apply echo suppression, in order to overcome the typical challenges introduced by the channel in indoor environments. Moreover, the optimization of the cross-correlation algorithm through oversampling the cross power spectrum and the curve-fitting algorithm allows to ensure subsample precision results. The performances of our developed AoA estimation system are evaluated by carrying out real-world experiments and compared with the state-of-the-art generalized cross correlators. Our ESDE algorithm is shown to outperform several generalized solutions.

In this letter, we consider the problem of 2-D elliptic localization, where multiple spatially separated sensors, including the transmitters and receivers, are exploited to locate the signal reflecting/relaying target in the mixed line-of-sight/nonline-of-sight (NLOS) environments. We begin by revisiting a plain closed-form linear least squares (LS) solution. As it is vulnerable to the existence of erroneous time-sum-of-arrival (TSOA) measurements under the NLOS conditions, we then devise two new data-selective LS methods, by which the outliers can be identified and mitigated and a higher level of resistance to the NLOS bias errors can be provided. To conduct data selection, the first algorithm combines the use of the traditional linear LS estimator and an additional cost function, whereas the second relies on the parameterization of the TSOA-defined ellipses and follows a nonlinear LS estimation criterion. Based on the simulations, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods in NLOS error mitigation at acceptable computational costs.

We propose an asynchronous acoustic chirp slope keying to map short bit sequences on single or multiple bands without preamble or error correction coding on the physical layer. We introduce a symbol detection scheme in the demodulator that uses the superposed matched filter results of up and down chirp references to estimate the symbol timing, which removes the requirement of a preamble for symbol synchronization. Details of the implementation are disclosed and discussed, and the performance is verified in a pool measurement on laboratory scale, as well as the simulation for a channel containing Rayleigh fading and Additive White Gaussian Noise. For time-bandwidth products (TB) of 50 in single band mode, a raw data rate of 100 bit/s is simulated to achieve bit error rates (BER) below 0.001 for signal-to-noise ratios above −6 dB. In dual-band mode, for TB of 25 and a data rate of 200 bit/s, the same bit error level was achieved for signal-to-noise ratios above 0 dB. The simulated packet error rates (PER) follow the general behavior of the BER, but with a higher error probability, which increases with the length of bits in each packet.