Experimental study on the effects of groups of people on magnetoquasistatic positioning accuracy

Position and orientation measurements have been demonstrated, recently, using low-frequency magnetoquasistatic fields and complex image theory for distances up to 50 m [1]. The key motivation for using magnetoquasistatic fields is to enable accurate estimation of an object's position and orientation when near weakly conducting dielectric obstacles, e.g., groups of people. An example application is tracking an American football during game-play [1]. In this paper, we present measurements using the magnetoquasistatic technique to show that the presence of a large group of 25 people introduces a peak distance error of less than 4.5 cm for an emitter-receiver distance of 10 m.