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JOURNAL OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING, VOLUME 11, ISSUE 2, FEBRUARY 2012 9

Comparisons of Indoor Position Enhancements by Using Mean and Kalman Filtering Techniques
Hakan Koyuncu and Shuang Hua Yang
Abstract - In this paper, a study of two filtering techniques is compared during indoor localization. Linear mean filtering and Kalman filtering techniques are employed during the pre and post position estimation phases to determine the location accuracies of unknown objects. Zigbee wireless sensor nodes (WSN) are employed together with RF Link quality indicator (LQI) values in measurements. Fingerprint based localization technique is utilized and k-NN algorithms are used to calculate the unknown positions. Linear mean filtering gives an average position accuracy of 3.5 meters in a sensing area with a grid space of 4 meters. Kalman filtering, on the other hand, gives an average position accuracy of 4.5 meters in the same sensing area. Index Terms- WSN, RF, LQI, k-NN, Transmitter (Tx), Receiver (Rx), Kalman, Application program (AP).

1 INTRODUCTION The localization problem has received considerable attention in the area of wireless sensor nodes and computing. Radio frequency (RF) technology is a widely used technology which utilizes received signal strength indicator (RSSI) or Link Quality indicator (LQI) to find the object positions. Although, in theory, they are a function of distance between a transmitter and a receiver, in practice, there are many problems such as reflections and absorptions due to propagation media [1,2]. In RF based localization, there are basically 2 models, [3]. In the first model, a transmitter which is a WSN is placed on the object and the receivers at well known points receive transmissions from this transmitter. The location of the object is computed by using these transmissions on a server computer. In the second model, a number of WSN transmitters are deployed at known positions and a receiver on the unknown object receives RSSI or LQI information to compute the object position. This study will focus on the second model in which the unknown object will carry an active WSN Receiver. In the envisaged system, four WSN transmitters, one Receiver, and middleware software are utilized.
H.Koyuncu is with Computer Science Dept, Loughborough University,Loughborough UK. S.H.Yang is with Computer Science Dept, Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK.

Location fingerprinting technique is applied to find the unknown object locations from a set of radio location fingerprints collected in a 2D space,[4]. Initially a fingerprint database is generated by recording LQI values at every grid point of the sensing area. k-NN algorithm is utilized to estimate the location of the unknown object. This algorithm computes the Euclidean distance between the measured LQI vector at unknown point and LQI vector at each fingerprint in the database. The coordinates, associated with the fingerprint, which provide the smallest Euclidean distance is returned as the estimate of the unknown position. Linear mean filtering and Kalman filtering are introduced in two phases identified as pre-estimation and post-estimation phases. During pre-estimation phase these filtering are used to reduce the random effects of the received LQI data. During the postestimation phase they are used to reduce the variations of calculated unknown object coordinates. Linear mean filtering is deployed on the received LQI values by obtaining their mean value at every fingerprint point in pre-estimation phase. Kalman filtering is similarly deployed on the received LQI values at every fingerprint point in this phase [5-7]. Fingerprint database is divided into a number of sequential sub fingerprint databases and the unknown object coordinates are calculated with respect to each of these newly created databases. Linear mean

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JOURNAL OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING, VOLUME 11, ISSUE 2, FEBRUARY 2012 10

filtering and Kalman filtering are deployed on the calculated object coordinates with these sub fingerprint databases during the post-estimation phase. In the literature, Linear mean and Kalman filtering techniques are applied individually on the received RSSI data to smooth the unpredicted variations before localization algorithms are used. Challenging aspect of this study is to deploy both filtering techniques and compare their localization accuracy levels with respect to grid space of the sensing area before and after the position calculation. The work is extended to the generation of sub fingerprint databases and multiple numbers of object coordinates are calculated for one unknown object point. This paper is organized as follows. In section 2, an understanding of fingerprint localization and k_NN algorithm together with the weight function used in the calculations are presented. In section 3, methodology of linear mean filtering and Kalman filtering techniques are introduced. Implementations of them are carried out in section 5. In section 6, conclusions are presented. 2 FINGERPRINT LOCALIZATION Received signal strength indicator (RSSI) is a parameter to identify the incoming radio signal. [1]. In Wireless sensor networks, the received signal strength is converted to RSSI. But in many applications RSSI has a high variance due to interference and environmental factors and the localization of unknown node becomes very imprecise. Another kind of radio signal identification is described by LQI values. The determination of distances is based on LQI of the transmission between transmitters and receivers. According to IEEE 802.15.4 standards, LQI is identified as the strength of the received signal. It is proportional to RSSI and has a discrete value between 0 and 255. Hence RSSI can be directly mapped into LQI, [8]. The transmitter nodes transmit the signal packets and receiver mobile node logs the LQI of the incoming signal packets and sends them to PC. LQI values of incoming radio signals decrease with increasing distance d between transmitters and receivers in free space, [9].

If the indoor sensing area does not have any obstacles, the radio propagation can be considered similar to the one in free space for small distances. On the other hand, if there are any obstacles, they introduce attenuation factors in radio propagation hence a variation in LQI values. 3 MATHEMATICAL MODEL In the study, 4 WSN transmitters at the corners and one receiver on the unknown object are employed in the sensing area. See figure 1.

Figure 1: Sensing area showing a grid point G and an unknown point P Transmitter Bi where i=1,2,3,4 at the known positions transmit their LQI values to the receiver on the unknown object P. The signal distance between P and the grid points in the fingerprint database is identified as Euclidean distance and calculated by using LQI values recorded at the respective positions, [4] The grid points with the smallest Euclidean distances to the unknown location are used to estimate the location of the unknown object. This estimation algorithm is called k-nearest neighborhood algorithm (k-NN). To improve the accuracy of the estimation, weighting technique is employed in the calculations. wi weight factor of the ith neighboring grid point in k-nearest neighborhood is utilized as in equation (1) . See reference [4].
wi 1 Ei3 k 1 Ei3 i 1

(1)

4 METHODOLOGY In the study, location fingerprinting technique is utilized by using k-NN algorithm and weight factor algorithm in equation (1). The technique is extended with smoothing algorithms applied on the received

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JOURNAL OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING, VOLUME 11, ISSUE 2, FEBRUARY 2012 11

LQI values in order to improve the position detection accuracy. The radio propagation characteristics display a random behavior. For example, fingerprints of two close points maybe very similar or very different from each other in time domain. These finite random variations are considered as noise and filtering techniques are applied to reduce them. Filtering techniques are deployed in localization problems to improve positioning accuracy. There are basically two filtering techniques in the literature which are used in RFID studies. These are linear mean filtering and Kalman filtering. They are applied on the received RSSI or LQI data. They reduce the randomness of the data and help to increase the accuracy of the position detection. Positioning calculations are carried out after this data correction stage. Filtering techniques are applied in two phases in the calculations. First phase is called preestimation phase and the second phase is called postestimation phase. Pre-estimation phase is solely related to data collection and their processing. Post estimation phase is the phase where the unknown object coordinates are calculated. The novelty in this study is to generate a number of sub fingerprint databases from each set of LQI readings at every fingerprint database point. A number of unknown object coordinates in time domain is calculated for the same unknown object coordinate by using sub fingerprint databases. The variations between these unknown object coordinates are reduced by using above filtering techniques which is a new approach in localization. 4.1 Linear mean filtering Initially, Linear mean filtering is deployed in the preestimation phase. Raw LQI data is processed and its randomness is reduced in this phase. A stream of LQI reading is received at every grid point in time domain. Mean filtering technique is applied on these LQI values and a final mean value is recorded at that grid point of fingerprint database as shown in equation (2).
LQI mean 1 n . LQI i n i1

filtered LQI value at that grid point. A new fingerprint database is generated by using these filtered LQI values at every grid point and it is used to estimate the unknown object position as before. During the post-estimation phase, several fingerprint databases are generated by using the equal number of subsections of recorded n number of LQI values at each grid point. Unknown position coordinates are calculated by using each of the newly generated fingerprint databases. Same number of unknown object coordinates, (x,y), are obtained as the number of fingerprint databases. Linear mean filtering is applied on these (x,y) coordinates to determine the best estimate of the unknown position coordinate as shown in equation (3). m is the number of calculated unknown object coordinates. (3)
( x, y ) mean 1 m
m

x,
j 1

1 m

y
j 1

4.2

Kalman

Filtering The purpose of the Kalman filtering is to estimate the state of a system from previous state measurements which contain random errors. One-dimensional Kalman filter is appropriately employed on the randomly received LQI values with respect to time, [10,11]. A general block diagram is given for the Kalman filtering operations in Figure 2. Suppose there is a random variable x(t) and there is a need to estimate its value at certain times of t0, t1, t2, t3, t4 x(tk) satisfies a linear dynamic equation : (4) x(tk 1) Fx (tk ) u (k )

(2)

where n is the number of LQI recordings at one grid point. For example, 20 LQIA values from transmitter B1 is arriving at the receiver on one grid point. The mean of these 20 values is recorded as the mean
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JOURNAL OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING, VOLUME 11, ISSUE 2, FEBRUARY 2012 12

Figure 2: Block diagram for Kalman filtering where F is a constant number, u(k) is the random noise with zero mean (u(k) = 0) and variance of u(k) =Q . Kalman filter needs an initial estimate to get started. Initial estimate of x(t0) is the actual value of x at time t0. x(t0) is called xe and it is the best estimate of x. The variance of the error becomes; (5) P E [( x ( t0 ) x e ) 2 ] E is the expected value operator, x(t0) is the actual value of x at time t0 and xe is the best estimate of x. Hence the term in brackets is the error in the estimate. In order to estimate x(t1), equation (3) is used. When k=0; equation (3) becomes;

x(t1 ) x(t0 1) F . x(t0 ) u(0)


Hence the new best estimate of x(t1) is ; new xe = F. xe Variance of the error of this estimate is

(6) (7)

newP

E [( x (t1 ) newxe ) 2 ]

(8) (9)

Substitute equations (3) and (4) into (7)

newP E[( F . x(t0 ) u F . x e ) 2 ]


Equation (8) can be expanded as;

newP E[( F 2 ( x(t 0 ) x e ) 2 Eu 2 2 E[ F ( x(t 0 ) x e )u ]


(10) The last term in equation (10) is zero due to the fact that u is not correlated with x(t0) and xe . Therefore equation (10) becomes;

newP F 2 E ( x(t0 ) xe ) 2

E (u 2 )

(11) (12)

after substitution , newP becomes;

newP

P.F 2

is used during communication between transmitter and receiver nodes,[12]. The layout of the sensing area is an international basketball field in a sports hall. A rectangular grid area of 20m x 12m is selected on the floor plane with a grid distance of 4 meters and any unknown object location is utilized within this rectangular area. Transmitter nodes are placed at 4 corners of the sensing area. LQI values coming from transmitter nodes are recorded by the object receiver node at each grid point. There are 24x4=96 LQI entries in the fingerprint database. Each entry in the database includes a mapping of the grid coordinate (x,y) and 4 LQI values at that point. At every grid point, 4 readings of LQI values are recorded n=20 times. The mean value of n LQI values is calculated by using equation (2) and recorded in the database as the mean LQI value at that grid point for each transmitter. Hence a new mean valued fingerprint database is generated during pre-estimation phase. Several unknown location fingerprint vectors, P(r1,r2,r3,r4), are measured at different grid points during the on-line measurement phase. n number of LQI readings are collected at these grid points from each transmitter. They are mean filtered out to generate a single mean value of LQI corresponding to one transmitter. Hence mean filtered P vectors for different unknown object positions are generated. By using k-NN and weight factor algorithms together with mean filtered fingerprint database and mean filtered unknown object fingerprint vectors, the unknown positions of the objects are estimated and displayed in Table 1.

Substituting P, F, Q values in equation (12); newP can be found. This process continued for each x value and the new estimated xe values are generated for a stream of x values. Kalman filtering is applied in both estimation phases. 5 IMPLEMENTATION JENNIC JN5139 wireless sensor nodes were deployed in the study. The Zigbee Home Sensor program was used to program JN5139 active devices to work as transmitter and receiver respectively. JN5139 receiver on unknown object is interfaced to a computer via a USB port for data transfer. ZigBee protocol which is based on IEEE 802.15.4 standards

Table 1: Estimated unknown position coordinates with mean filtered fingerprint database in preestimation phase

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In the second part, one dimensional Kalman filtering is applied in two phases. During pre-estimation phase, Kalman filtering is applied on n LQI values which are received from each transmitter at every grid point, [13], and generated a resultant Kalman filtered LQI value. This value is the predicted LQI value and it is recorded in a new fingerprint database at that grid point. A sample plot of LQI values with and without Kalman Filtering at an example grid point are shown in Figure 3a and 3b.

Table 2: Estimated unknown position coordinates by using Kalman filtering in pre-estimation phase During post-estimation phase, Linear mean filtering is applied on the estimated position coordinates. n=20 LQI readings at each grid point is organized in groups of m=5 consecutive readings. This grouping is applied on all LQI readings and 4 sub fingerprint databases are generated from the main fingerprint database. 5 consecutive LQI readings at each grid point are mean filtered out and placed at that grid point as the mean LQI value in the new sub fingerprint database. Unknown object P vectors are similarly processed and 5 consecutive sub P vectors are generated in order to be used with respective sub fingerprint databases. Estimated unknown object coordinates for one sub fingerprint database is given in table 3.

Figure 3a: Plots of LQIA, at grid point (0,2), Black: raw LQI values , Blue: Kalman filtered LQI values

Figure 3b: Plots of LQIB, at grid point (0,2), Black: raw LQI values , Blue: Kalman filtered LQI values A new fingerprint database is generated by using the Kalman values at every grid point and identified as Kalman fingerprint database. Similar Kalman filtering technique is used to determine the unknown fingerprint P vectors. n number of LQI values from each transmitter are recorded at each unknown object location. Kalman filtering is applied on them and the Kalman filtered LQI values are generated for these unknown locations. By using the generated Kalman fingerprint database and the Kalman filtered unknown fingerprint P vectors, Fingerprint localization technique is utilized to determine the unknown object location coordinates. Estimated unknown location coordinates are presented in table 2. Table 3: Estimated unknown position coordinates with mean filtered fingerprint database in postestimation phase Hence 4 unknown object coordinates are calculated for every unknown object location in time domain. These calculated object coordinates are linear mean filtered by averaging them to generate the coordinates of unknown object location during post-estimation phase. Kalman filtering is applied on the above calculated 4 unknown object coordinates to reduce the variations among them during post-estimation phase. Examples of Kalman filtering at one unknown object coordinates are given in Figures 4 .

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8 7.5 7
LQI values
9.4

noisy LQI measurements an estimate of LQI

9.2 9 8.8

noisy LQI measurements an estimate of LQI

6.5 6 5.5 5

8.6 8.4 8.2 8 7.8 7.6

4.5 1

1.5

2.5 Iteration

3.5

7.4

1.5

2.5 Iteration

3.5

Figure 4: Kalman filtering of x,y coordinates at object point (4,4) Estimated Kalman filtered unknown object coordinates with respect to coordinates calculated with sub fingerprint databases during post-estimation phase are presented in table 4.

Table 4: Estimated Kalman filtered unknown object coordinates during post-estimation phase Finally, Estimated object coordinates with respect to their estimation methods are summarized in table 5.

Table 5: Comparisons of estimated object coordinates with respect to estimation methods. 6 CONCLUSIONS This study presented some novel enhancement techniques in 2D indoor localization such as linear mean filtering and Kalman filtering during different stages of localization. These stages are identified as pre-estimation and post-estimation phases. Filtering techniques are applied before and after the estimation process and the estimated results are compared with respect to positioning accuracies. Initially, the raw LQI data is filtered out and large fluctuations are eliminated. Once the unknown position coordinates are calculated, the filtering is applied on these coordinates to reduce their spatial

variations. Filtering raw data can be seen in literature but the filtering during the post-estimation phase is a new approach in localization procedures. Another novel procedure is to divide the main fingerprint database into sub fingerprint databases in time domain and calculate the unknown points for all these sub fingerprint databases. In the study Zigbee wireless sensor nodes namely readers and tags are deployed together with radio location fingerprinting technique. A 2D signal strength matrix is constructed by using LQI values of the radio signals and identified as fingerprint database. Unknown position coordinates are estimated on a planar and obstacle free test bed. Fingerprint databases are generated by utilizing linear mean filtering and Kalman filtering. Fingerprint localization technique together with kNN and weight factor algorithms are employed and unknown object positions are determined in indoors. It can be seen in table 5 that the best average error distance is 3.5meters with mean filtered fingerprint database. This is less than the grid space of 4meters. Average error distance increases from using preestimated to post-estimated Kalman fingerprint databases. Although the best average error distance is less than the grid space distance, the error between the actual and the estimated object coordinates is in 3-4 meter range. If the results are related to authors previous similar work in reference, [4], it can be seen that there is a close relationship between the size of the sensing area and the position accuracy. Similar fingerprint localization technique is utilized in both cases. A sensing area of 5mx3m produced an error distance of 1.1m between the actual and the estimated coordinates of an unknown object point in reference [4] while 20mx12m sensing area in this study produced a minimum error distance of 3.5 m. In this study, the error distance is less than 1 grid space. In small sensing area the error distance is %110 of the grid space while in larger sensing area the error distance is %88 of the grid space. Small sensing areas are susceptible to more random recordings of LQI values due to interference compared to smaller areas. This factor is reflected on the error size. This deficiency can be eliminated by

LQI values

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introducing large number of reference receivers in the sensing areas. Finally it can be concluded that the accuracy of position detection is the best with mean filtering. Preestimation phase Kalman filtering results are close to mean filtering results. In future works, Larger number of LQI recordings will be carried out and the effects of the sensing area size and the introduction of reference receivers will be studied to improve the positioning accuracies.

[13] Raman Kumar K, Yogesh A Powar, Varsha Apte; Improving Accuracy of Wireless LAN based Location Determination System using Kalman Filter and Multiple Observers , Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering Indian Institute of Technology Bombay Mumbai, Maharastra, India

Hakan Koyuncu has a Bsc in Computer Engineering and an Msc in Computer science . He is currently doing his PHD in Computer Science department of Loughborough University ,Loughborough,UK . His research area is in wireless sensor Networks and mobile computing. Shuan Hua Yang is a Professor in Computer Science department of Loughborough University ,loughborough, UK . He is FInstMC, SMIEEE and CEng. His research areas are in wireless sensor networks ,pervasive computing ,mobile agent Technologies and internet based control.

REFERENCES
[1] T.S. Rappaport ,Wireless communications principles and practise,Prentice Hall PTR ,1996 [2] H.koyuncu,S.H.Yang A survey of indoor positioning and object locating systems ,IJCSNS , Vol 10, No 5, May 2010 , pp 121-128 [3] D,Zhan,J.Ma,Q.Chen and L.M.Ni An RF based system for sensing transceiver free objects, in proceedings of percom,2007 [4] H.Koyuncu,S.H.Yang A 2D positioning system using WSNs in indoor environment, IJECS-IJENS, Vol 11, No 3, pp70-77, 2011 [5] Simo Aliloytty,Tommi Perala, Robert Piche; Fingerprint Kalman Filter in Indoor Positioning applications, 18th IEEE Conf on control applications July 2009, pp 1678-1683 [6] I Guvenc,Abdallah R. Jordan, O.Dedeoglu; Enhancements to RSS based indoor tracking systems using Kalman Filters, International Signal processing Conference (ISPC) and Global signal processing expo, Marc 3 ,2003 , Dallas , USA [7] Wan Young Chung,Boon Giin Lee, Chi Shian yang; 3D virtual viewer on mobile device for wireless Sensor network based RSSI indoor tracking System, Sensors and Actuators B : Chemical 140, 2009, pp 35-42 [8] Texas instruments Zigbeready RF transceiver http://focus.ti.com/lit/ds/swrs041b/swrs041b.pdf, 2007 [9] Ralf grossman Localization in zigbee-based wireless sensor networks Technical report University of Rostock,Institute MD, April 2007 [10] http://www.math.wustl.edu/~victor/classes/ ma450/ classes/ma450/Kalmanf.m [11] P.D Joseph, The one dimensional Kalman Filter, Introductory lesson [12] http://www.jennic.com/jennic_support/application _notes/jn-an-1052_home_sensor_demonstration_ using_zigbee

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