Technology Report : Smartphone-Based Pedestrian Dead Reckoning Integrated with Data-Fusion-Adopted Visible Light Positioning

Pedestrian dead-reckoning (PDR) is a potential indoor localization technology that obtains location estimation with the inertial measurement unit (IMU). However, one of its most significant drawbacks is the accumulation of its measurement error. This paper proposes a visible light positioning (VLP)-integrated PDR system, which could achieve real-time and accurate indoor positioning using IMU and the camera sensor of our smartphone. A multi-frame fusion method is proposed in the encoding and decoding process of the system, reaching 98.5% decoding accuracy with a 20-bit-long ID at the height of 2.1 m, which allows the variation in the shutter speeds of cameras and heights of the LED. Meanwhile, absolute locations and step length could be calibrated with the help of a single light-emitting diode (LED), promising average accuracy within 0.5 meters in a 108-meter walk.