Passive Indoor Localization for Visible Light Communication Systems

In this paper we present a new methodology for indoor localization using visible light emissions which does not require users to actively participate in the process. Our passive positioning approach utilizes a network of luminaires and receivers on the ceiling and measures the impulse responses (IRs) between each source-receiver pair. This channel sounding approach leverages changes in the measured IRs to localize an object in the room. Simulation results show that with a database of sampled IRs, the root mean squared (RMS) positioning error can be made on the order of 4 cm. In order to lower storage requirements, a simplified database based on fitting to an integrating sphere model of the IR yields localization performance with RMS error around 6 cm.