Skip to main content
Log in

Improving the accuracy of ultrasound-based localisation systems

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Personal and Ubiquitous Computing Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

We present an improvement to ultrasound-based indoor location systems like Cricket (Priyantha et al. The Cricket location-support system, 2000). By encoding and modulating the ultrasound pulses, we are able to achieve greater accuracy in distance measurements. Besides improving the distance measurements, we improve the position update rate by synchronising the active beacons. We also propose a method that could further improve the update rate by superimposing encoded ultrasound pulses. Further, an experimental evaluation of our improvements is presented.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Priyantha B, Chakraborty A, Balakrishnan H (2000) The Cricket location-support system. In: Proceedings of the 6th ACM MOBICOM, Boston, MA

  2. Want R, Hopper A, Falcao V, Gibbons J The active badge location system. Olivetti Research Ltd., Cambridge

  3. Jiménez AR, Morgado F, Seco F (2004) Ultrasound position estimation sensor for precise localisation of archaeological findings. In: Eurosensors XVIII, Rome, Italy

  4. Priyantha B, Miu A, Balakrishnan H, Teller S (2001) The Cricket compass for context-aware mobile applications. In: Proceedings of the 7th ACM MOBICOM, Rome, Italy

  5. Cricket Project (2004) Cricket v2 User Manual. MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, Cambridge, http://www.cricket.csail.mit.edu/v2man.html

  6. Addlesee M, Curwen R, Hodges S, Newman J, Steggles P, Ward A, Hopper A (2001) Implementing a sentient computing system. IEEE Comput Mag 34(8):50–56

    Google Scholar 

  7. Harter A, Hopper A, Steggles P, Ward A, Webster P (1999) The anatomy of a context-aware application. In: Proceedings of the fifth annual ACM/IEEE international conference on mobile computing and networking, MOBICOM’99, Seattle, Washington, USA

  8. Bahl P, Padmanabhan VN (2000) RADAR: an in-building RF-based user location and tracking system. In: Proceedings of the IEEE Infocom 2000, Tel Aviv, Israel, vol 2, pp 775–784

  9. Bahl P, Balachandran A, Padmanabhan VN (2000) Enhancements to the RADAR user location and tracking system. Microsoft Research Technical Report

  10. Hazas M, Ward A (2002) A novel broadband ultrasonic location system. In: Proceedings of UbiComp 2002: fourth international conference on ubiquitous computing, Göteborg, Sweden

  11. Hazas M, Ward A (2003) A high performance privacy-oriented location system. In: Proceedings of the first IEEE international conference on pervasive computing and communications (PerCom 2003), Dallas-Fort Worth, USA

  12. Jiménez AR, Seco F, Ceres R, Calderón L (2004) Absolute localization using active beacons: a survey and IAI-CSIC contributions

  13. Balakrishnan H, Baliga R, Curtis D, Goraczko M, Miu A, Priyantha B, Smith A, Steele K, Teller S, Wang K (2003) Lessons from developing and deploying the Cricket Indoor Location System, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab

  14. Uhl K (2003) In-House Lokalisierungssystem zur Positionsbestimmung von Robotern. Lab Report, Universität Ulm

  15. Cricket Project: Schematics of a Cricket Mote, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, Cambridge, MA, http://www.cricket.csail.mit.edu/software2.0/Cricket_Mote_Schematic_6310-0335-02_b.pdf

  16. Seyffer M (2004) Lokalisation in Gebäuden mit intelligenten Sensoren. Diplomarbeit, Universität Ulm

  17. Lüke HD (1992) Korrelationssignale, Korrelationsfolgen und Korrelationsarrays in Nachrichten- und Informationstechnik, Messtechnik und Optik. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg New York

    Google Scholar 

  18. Skolnik MI (1990) Radar handbook, 2nd ed. McGraw-Hill, New York

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hubert Piontek.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Piontek, H., Seyffer, M. & Kaiser, J. Improving the accuracy of ultrasound-based localisation systems. Pers Ubiquit Comput 11, 439–449 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-006-0096-1

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-006-0096-1

Keywords

Navigation