INDOOR POSITIONING BY ULTRAWIDE BAND RADIO AIDED INERTIAL NAVIGATION

A research study aimed at developing a novel indoor positioning system is presented. The realized system prototype uses sensor fusion techniques to combine information from two sources: an in-house developed local Ultra-Wideband (UWB) radio-based ranging system and an inertial navigation system (INS). The UWB system measures the distance between two transceivers by recording the round-trip-time (RTT) of UWB radio pulses. Its principle of operation is briefly described, together with the main design features. Furthermore, the main characteristics of the INS and of the Extended Kalman Filter information fusion approach are presented. Finally, selected static and dynamic test scenario experimental results are provided. In particular, the advantages of the proposed information fusion approach are further investigated by means of a high dynamic test scenario.