Indoor optical wireless localization system with height estimation for high-speed wireless communications in personal areas

High-speed wireless communications in personal areas are now highly demanded, given that broadband connectivity has now reached the doorstep of the users' premises. Optical wireless technology has been considered as a promising solution due to the availability of huge unregulated bandwidth. However, the coverage area of optical wireless communication systems is limited because of safety issues and localization of users is needed. Previously, we proposed a localization system for personal areas based on optical wireless technology, so the same system was used for both localization and high-speed wireless communications. However, the height difference between the fiber transceiver and subscriber was fixed in the investigation. In real applications, the height of subscriber unit is always changing and the localization system should have the capability of estimating the height difference. In this paper, we propose a novel optical wireless based localization system for personal areas with the capability of height estimation. The localization and height estimation functions are realized by the combinational usage of received signal power and angle of arrival information. Experimental results show that a localization accuracy of ~ 4.73 cm can be achieved and the height estimation accuracy is ~ 4.86 cm. When this localization system with height estimation is incorporated with the previously proposed optical wireless communication system, high-speed wireless connectivity can be provided in personal areas.