PT-Sync: COTS Speaker-based Pseudo Time Synchronization for Acoustic Indoor Positioning

Positioning with a small number of anchors is an important issue in the study of acoustic indoor positioning systems (AIPS). We present PT-Sync, a novel approach to time-synchronize between a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) speaker and a mobile device by leveraging acoustic sensing and reflected signals from the floor. PT-Sync enables ranging with one speaker and 2-D positioning with two speakers without any additional hardware. Our proposed time synchronization method requires height information from the floor in the calculation process, which we estimate by active acoustic sensing. Using a unique averaging technique and IMU enables robust height estimation. PT-Sync can be used in a variety of indoor environments and can be time-synchronized with already installed speakers. The results of the evaluation experiment confirmed that a synchronization error of 0.16 ms was achieved even at a distance of 6 m from the speaker, and that synchronization on the order of microseconds could be achieved. Furthermore, pedestrian tracking experiments confirmed that positioning of less than 38.9 cm can be achieved at the 90th percentile.