Semi-Analytical Orientation Method Based on Geomagnetism and Spatial Context Information

Abstract

In the era of the Internet of Things(IoT), the demand is increasingly urgent in terms of high-precision and ubiquitous indoor positioning. However, it lacks robust technical solutions, and one of the challenges is to solve the orientation problem for indoor pedestrians by making good use of geomagnetic field. As we all know, the orientation can be acquired through analytical method based on geomagnetic field in the open outdoor environment, while it is difficult to apply the analytical method in indoor environments when taking the serious magnetic distortion into consideration. In order to solve the above issues, this paper proposes a semi-analytical orientation method. Firstly, the proposed method can get the corrected results by the fusion of the result from analytic orientation with that from the geometric relationship of the corridor structure extracted based on the spatial context information, and the fusion coefficient is determined through the magnetic distortion measurement and judgment. Then we deeply analyzed the influence of different coefficients on the results. Finally, the test results show that the proposed method has good robustness and can effectively improve the orientation accuracy compared with the existing methods, and can be widely used in path-based or corridor-based positioning and orientation scenarios.