skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Title: Self-Calibrating Indoor Trajectory Tracking System Using Distributed Monostatic Radars For Large Scale Deployment
24/7 continuous recording of in-home daily trajectories is informative for health status assessment (e.g., monitoring Alzheimer’s, dementia based on behavior patterns). Indoor device-free localization/tracking are ideal because no user efforts on wearing devices are needed. However, prior work mainly focused on improving the localization accuracy. They relied on well-calibrated sensor placements, which require hours of intensive manual setup and respective expertise, feasible only at small scale and by mostly re- searchers themselves. Scaling the deployments to tens or hundreds of real homes, however, would incur prohibitive manual efforts, and become infeasible for layman users. We present SCALING, a plug-and-play indoor trajectory monitoring system that layman users can easily setup by walking a one-minute loop trajectory after placing radar nodes on walls. It uses a self calibrating algorithm that estimates sensor locations through their distance measurements to the person walking the trajectory, a trivial effort without taxing layman users physically or cognitively. We evaluate SCALING via simulations and two testbeds (in lab and home configurations of sizes 3 × 6 sq m and 4.5 × 8.5 sq m). Experimental results demonstrate that SCALING outperformed the baseline using the approximate multidimensional scaling (MDS, the most relevant method in the context of self calibration) by 3.5 m/1.6 m in 80-percentile error of self calibration and tracking,respectively.Notably,only1% degradation in performance has been observed with SCALING compared to the classical multilateration with known sensor locations (anchors), which costs hours of intensive calibrating effort.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1951880
PAR ID:
10439770
Author(s) / Creator(s):
;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
ACM International Conference on Systems for Energy-Efficient Buildings, Cities, and Transportation
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. Abstract 24/7 continuous recording of in-home daily trajectories is informative for health status assessment (e.g., monitoring Alzheimer’s, dementia based on behavior patterns). Indoor device-free localization/tracking are ideal because no user efforts on wearing devices are needed. However, prior work mainly focused on improving the localization accuracy. They relied on well-calibrated sensor placements, which require hours of intensive manual setup and respective expertise, feasible only at small scale and by mostly researchers themselves. Scaling the deployments to tens or hundreds of real homes, however, would incur prohibitive manual efforts, and become infeasible for layman users. We presentSCALING, a plug-and-play indoor trajectory monitoring system that layman users can easily set up by walking a one-minute loop trajectory after placing radar nodes on walls. It uses a self calibrating algorithm that estimates sensor locations through their distance measurements to the person walking the trajectory, a trivial effort without taxing layman users physically or cognitively. We evaluateSCALINGvia simulations and two testbeds (in lab and home configurations of sizes 3$$\times$$ × 6 sq m and 4.5$$\times$$ × 8.5 sq m). Experimental results demonstrate thatSCALINGoutperformed the baseline using the approximate multidimensional scaling (MDS, the most relevant method in the context of self calibration) by 3.5 m/1.6 m in 80-percentile error of self calibration and tracking, respectively. Notably, only 1% degradation in performance has been observed withSCALINGcompared to the classical multilateration with known sensor locations (anchors), which costs hours of intensive calibrating effort. In addition, we conduct Monte Carlo experiments to numerically analyze the impact of sensor placements and develop practical guidelines for deployment in real life scenarios. 
    more » « less
  2. The democratization of indoor tracking systems lays the ground- work for a wide spectrum of smart home applications. While prior work on RF-based device-free localization/tracking have shown preferable features and promising results, they heavily relied on well-calibrated sensor placements, which require hours of intensive manual setup and respective expertise, making it prohibitively expensive to scale deployments to wide range (e.g., tens or hundreds of real homes). We propose SCALING, a plug-and-play indoor tracking system, of which the key enabler is a self calibrating algorithm that estimates the distributed sensor locations through their distance measurements to a person walking a trajectory, a trivial effort without taxing layman users physically or cognitively. We have experimentally evaluated SCALING via real world testbeds and shown an 80-percentile tracking accuracy of 40.5 cm, only 1% degradation compared to the classical multilateration with known sensor locations (anchors), which costs hours of intensive calibrating effort. 
    more » « less
  3. Localization based context awareness in mobile phones can enable several conveniences for users. This demonstration explores a way to smartly control notification and "Do not disturb" settings for the mobile phones based on the user's indoor location. Furthermore, users can setup location-based reminders which pop-up on the mobile phone when the user visits a specific indoor location. While enabling full-scale indoor localization might be challenging, we use just a few UWB beacons placed strategically, say embedded inside home-assistant devices, Wi-Fi routers, etc. and a UWB enabled phone to provide the required context awareness. Video: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/MbBwPw0BIJU 
    more » « less
  4. Dead reckoning is a promising yet often overlooked smartphone-based indoor localization technology that relies on phone-mounted sensors for counting steps and estimating walking directions, without the need for extensive sensor or landmark deployment. However, misalignment between the phone’s direction and the user’s actual movement direction can lead to unreliable direction estimates and inaccurate location tracking. To address this issue, this paper introduces SWiLoc (Smartphone and WiFi-based Localization), an enhanced direction correction system that integrates passive WiFi sensing with smartphone-based sensing to form Correction Zones. Our two-phase approach accurately measures the user’s walking directions when passing through a Correction Zone and further refines successive direction estimates outside the zones, enabling continuous and reliable tracking. In addition to direction correction, SWiLoc extends its capabilities by incorporating a localization technique that leverages corrected directions to achieve precise user localization. This extension significantly enhances the system’s applicability for high-accuracy localization tasks. Additionally, our innovative Fresnel zone-based approach, which utilizes unique hardware configurations and a fundamental geometric model, ensures accurate and robust direction estimation, even in scenarios with unreliable walking directions. We evaluate SWiLoc across two real-world environments, assessing its performance under varying conditions such as environmental changes, phone orientations, walking directions, and distances. Our comprehensive experiments demonstrate that SWiLoc achieves an average 75th percentile error of 8.89 degrees in walking direction estimation and an 80th percentile error of 1.12 m in location estimation. These figures represent reductions of 64% and 49%, respectively for direction and location estimation error, over existing state-of-the-art approaches. 
    more » « less
  5. Abstract Ion‐sensitive field effect transistor‐based pH sensors have been shown to perform well in high frequency and long‐term ocean sampling regimes. The Honeywell Durafet is widely used due to its stability, fast response, and characterization over a large range of oceanic conditions. However, potentiometric pH monitoring is inherently complicated by the fact that the sensors require careful calibration. Offsets in calibration coefficients have been observed when comparing laboratory to field‐based calibrations and prior work has led to the recommendation that an in situ calibration be performed based on comparison to discrete samples. Here, we describe our work toward a self‐calibration apparatus integrated into a SeapHOx pH, dissolved oxygen, and CTD sensor package. This Self‐Calibrating SeapHOx is capable of autonomously recording calibration values from a high quality, traceable, primary reference standard: equimolar tris buffer. The Self‐Calibrating SeapHOx's functionality was demonstrated in a 6‐d test in a seawater tank at Scripps Institution of Oceanography (La Jolla, California, U.S.A.) and was successfully deployed for 2 weeks on a shallow, coral reef flat (Lizard Island, Australia). During the latter deployment, the tris‐based self‐calibration using 15 on‐board samples exhibited superior reproducibility to the standard spectrophotometric pH‐based calibration using > 100 discrete samples. Standard deviations of calibration pH using tris ranged from 0.002 to 0.005 whereas they ranged from 0.006 to 0.009 for the standard spectrophotometric pH‐based method; the two independent calibration methods resulted in a mean pH difference of 0.008. We anticipate that the Self‐Calibrating SeapHOx will be capable of autonomously providing climate quality pH data, directly linked to a primary seawater pH standard, and with improvements over standard calibration techniques. 
    more » « less