Opportunistic Hybrid VLC-IMU Positioning

IMU systems can provide positioning without requiring deployed infrastructure. Nonetheless, they suffer from large cumulative errors. On the other hand, visible light communications (VLC) systems can deliver highly accurate positioning as long as communication coverage is assured, which does not always happens in indoor environments. In order to overcome these drawbacks, we propose an opportunistic hybrid VLC-IMU positioning system. The function of VLC system is to refresh the position calculated by IMU system, reducing errors caused by drifting effect and noise, contributing to demonstrate that VLC communication provides the down-link data to IMU refreshing with a correct position. In the other hand, IMU positioning system is used when there does not exist sufficient VLC coverage. Real scenario experiments were carried out to evaluate the performance of our opportunistic method.