3D Indoor Localization using Visible Light Communications

Abstract: Due to increasing demand for wireless spectrum and considering its scarcity, wireless optical communications technology is expected to be used in future systems. Recently, visible light communications (VLC) is introduced as an alternative to the global positioning system (GPS) to be used inside the buildings where GPS does not work properly. In this paper, a new method for localization of an optical receiver is proposed in which, information received from indoor optical transmitters is used. In this method, first the angle of arrival of received signal is calculated, using the field of view of optical transmitter and then least square estimation (LSE) is used to localize the receiver in 3 dimensional indoor environment. Simulation results show that we the location of optical receiver in 3D indoor environment can be estimated using 4 visual access pints with approximately 0.6 meters average error.

Keywords: Localization; Visible Light Communications; Least Square Estimator; Optical Communication.