Cooperative multipath-aided indoor localization

To obtain good position accuracy with state-of-the-art indoor localization algorithms, multiple anchors must be within radio range of the user. However, anchor placement and maintenance is expensive. By reducing the number of anchors per room, overall costs are reduced. In [1], an algorithm that can estimate the position of a user using only one anchor and a priori floor plan information. However, performance for static localization was poor due to the presence of ambiguities. This paper describes a cooperative positioning algorithm that utilizes a single anchor and provides both the position and the position uncertainty for multiple users, by letting the users exchange their position information. The problem is represented with a factor graph, and belief propagation (BP) is used to extract the positions and their accuracy. The proposed cooperative algorithm leads to a significant improvement of the positioning accuracy compared to the non-cooperative method from [1].