Design of a Wireless Assisted Pedestrian Dead Reckoning System—The NavMote Experience

Abstract

In this paper, we combine inertial sensing and sensor network technology to create a pedestrian dead reckoning system. The core of the system is a lightweight sensor-and-wireless-embedded device called NavMote that is carried by a pedestrian. The NavMote gathers information about pedestrian motion from an integrated magnetic compass and accelerometers. When the NavMote comes within range of a sensor network (composed of NetMotes), it downloads the compressed data to the network. The network relays the data via a RelayMote to an information center where the data are processed into an estimate of the pedestrian trajectory based on a dead reckoning algorithm. System details including the NavMote hardware/software, sensor network middleware services, and the dead reckoning algorithm are provided. In particular, simple but effective step detection and step length estimation methods are implemented in order to reduce computation, memory, and communication requirements on the Motes. Static and dynamic calibrations of the compass data are crucial to compensate the heading errors. The dead reckoning performance is further enhanced by wireless telemetry and map matching. Extensive testing results show that satisfactory tracking performance with relatively long operational time is achieved. The paper also serves as a brief survey on pedestrian navigation systems, sensors, and techniques.