Fully-coupled hybrid IEEE 802.15.4a UWB/IMU position estimation in indoor environments

This paper presents a fully-coupled indoor positioning system combining IEEE 802.15.4a Ultra Wideband (UWB) with 6 degrees of freedom inertial sensing. Fully-coupled implies that the positioning system not only implements position estimation of the object by fusing the UWB and inertial measurements, but also employs the IEEE 802.15.4a UWB as a wireless communication mechanism for exchanging position-based messages between two independent nodes, and thus makes timely remote tracking possible. Two positioning approaches namely inertial navigation system (INS) and INS with UWB correction are investigated. The fully-coupled positioning system is implemented and tested in two practical cases related to indoor positioning. Experimental results show that the proposed system is capable of realizing both local and remote positioning, and the INS with UWB correction approach shows improved positioning performance when compared to the INS-only approach.