Adaptive real-time dual-mode filter design for seamless pedestrian navigation

Seamless navigation requires that the mobile device is capable of offering a position solution both indoors and outdoors. Novel seamless navigation system design was implemented and tested to achieve this aim. The design consists of general navigation system framework blocks and of the necessary interface agreements between the blocks. This approach enables plug-and-play style design of modules. The implementation used four preselected key technologies. Microstrain 3DM-GX4-45 foot-mounted inertial measurement unit sensor data was fused together with the u-blox GNSS receiver positions outdoors. Context sensitive inference engine enabled the fusion of position updates indoors from the De-cawave TREK1000 Ultra WideBand ranging kit and from the 6 Kontakt.io/Raspberry Pi anchor-based Bluetooth low energy fingeprinting system. Novel dual-mode filter design uses a particle filter and the pentagon buffer enhanced Kalman filter in the position solution derivation. Depending on the map and the walls in the environment and on the quality of position updates, the implemented control logic employs the most fit filter for the current context. Computational power is now focussed, when particle filter is needed. The novel pentagon buffer enhanced Kalman filter is 10 times faster, allowing power saving when situation is not too critical. Moreover, the buffer provides position updates by interacting with the map and helps to correct the position solution. The navigation system is seamless according to the tests conducted around and within the Nottingham Geospatial building. No user input is needed for smooth transition from outdoors to indoors and vice versa. The system achieves an accuracy of 2.35 m outdoors and 1.4 m indoors (95% of error). Inertial system availability was continuous, while GNSS was available outdoors and BLE and UWB indoors.