The Need for a dedicated Foot Mounted Navigation Device for

Indoor Positioning
Vasanth S (Marketing Consultant for GT Silicon Pvt Ltd., an IIT Kanpur Incubatee based in India)

Introduction:
In this paper we highlight the requirements and provide a comparison of the various technologies
available in the market today. In summary we conclude that, a foot mounted inertial navigation sensor is
the ideal solution for indoor position market as it is not dependent on prior presence of infrastructure.

Requirements:
GPS does not work indoors and companies are racing to map and capture the Indoor positioning market.
Some of the popular applications for indoor positioning can be classified into
1. Navigation and Guidance pedestrian navigation
2. Tracking and Monitoring friend/co-worker finding
3. Situational Awareness First Responders
The key parameters to be considered during the selection of indoor positioning system application are 1. Accurate 3D co-ordinates (needs to be in the order of tens of meters or lower; for example, in
which floor is the first responder? Co-ordinates must be reliable in the presence of interference
like multipath/fading)
2. No/less dependency on infrastructure for computing location (WiFi/BT routers require
permission from site owners to use the equipment; Battery and Co-ordinates of the
infrastructure equipment must have less impact the co-ordinate readings )
3. Time to first fix (can the system report the location in < 1s)
4. Update rate (can the system track at a rate of 100Hz+)
5. Open System (no licensing cost)
6. Ease of integration and ability to fuse multiple sensor data
7. Low total System Cost (infrastructure, device, monthly service cost)
8. Power Consumption
9. Privacy Concerns
10. Availability of indoor 3D maps

Todays Solutions
There are a number of technologies available in the market for indoor positioning. Below, I have
compared the key technologies:
A-GPS

Cellular

Components
Coverage

GPS, Cellular
Outdoor

Dependency on
Infrastructure
3D Co-ordinates

GPS, Cell Signals

2G Radio
Outdoor &
Indoor (UHF
Frequency)
Cellular Network

Accuracy

100m 1 km

Time to First Fix

Short

Update Frequency
Power
Consumption

Seconds
High

Infra Cost
Device Cost

Existing Network
Low (integrated in
smart phones)

WiFi/BT
infrastructure
2D only
2D + rough 3D
estimate
100m 1 km
1 300m
(depends on
(depends on the
number of
number of APs)
towers)
Susceptible to
multipath and
fading
Short
Short (WiFi), Very
short (BLE)
Seconds
seconds
High
WiFi: High (AP
Scanning); BT:
Low
Existing Network Medium
Low (integrated Low (integrated in
in smart phones) smart phones)

Service Cost

High

High

Privacy Concern

High

High

2D only

Wireless (WiFi,
BT)
WiFi/BT Radio
Indoor & Outdoor

3rd party
controlled
High

Foot Mounted
IMU
Indoor & Outdoor

None (self
contained)
3D
1 10m; Higher
accuracy achieved
using Zero Update
algorithm

Very Short
Milli-seconds
Medium

None
Medium
(separate foot
mounted device)
None
Low

It is evident from the above table that foot mounted devices are preferred over other devices. That begs
the question, if the foot mounted devices work on IMUs, why not leverage the IMU in the smartphone
itself? The key reason is IMUs accumulate errors while measuring distance, and hence the IMUs in
smartphone need to be initialized by fusing data from other sensors (GPS, WiFi, etc.). Fusing of the data
is reliable, only if the lag is known before-hand. So, this solution is not a standalone system and hence
suffers from the same disadvantages of GPS/WiFi based localization.
If you have any feedback or questions, please write to vasanths@gt-silicon.com