Wi-Fi-Aided Magnetic Field Positioning with Floor Estimation in Indoor Multi-Floor Navigation Services

Our paper addresses Indoor Navigation, i.e., the navigation in the three-dimensional space of buildings. Indoor navigation lifecycle is alike outdoor navigation, and it embraces Mapping, Positioning, Path Planning, and En-route Assistance. In such life cycle, positioning is, of course, a critical element. In indoor navigation, an ideal positioning should operate in the indoor three-dimensional space, and integrate sensors, magnetometer, accelerator, etc. In order to achieve this goal, we combine External Navigation System (ENS) and Inertial Navigation System (INS). In ENS, Wi-Fi signal strengths estimate the floor information, and magnetometer matches magnetic data in real time. In INS, pedestrian motion is measured by accelerator with heading, user steps and walking distance. An eXtended Particle Filtering (XPF) effectively combines both positioning measurements and user movements. The integration of Wi-Fi-aided magnetic field positioning and XPF with Dead Reckoning is the main novelty of our solution, which has been validated by experiments and shows a good performance.