Indoor Positioning Techniques

Dear Colleagues,

Indoor positioning techniques (IPTs) are a strong enabler for various fields of applications, including location-based services, ambient assisted living, line traceability, simultaneous localization and mapping, telemanipulation, and Industry 4.0. The required accuracy depends on the specific application, ranging from a few meters, which are needed to navigate a large mall, to less than 1 cm, required for biometrics and telemanipulation.

As a result of the reduced effectiveness of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) in indoor environments, several IPS techniques were developed over the years. The approaches mentioned in the literature include image recognition techniques, inertial measurements, and the measurement of specific parameters of different signals, including ultrasounds, radio frequency waves, or magnetic fields. Various parameters may be measured, such as the direction of arrival, time domain quantities, and received signal strength.

Positioning or tracking is then performed using digital signal processing. As each measurement principle introduces specific challenges, various methods have been proposed, and possibly jointly used. They include fitting the measurements to a signal propagation model with respect to the known position anchors, sensor fusion between heterogeneous measurements, and the usage of locally generated fingerprinting datasets, often coupled with machine learning techniques. The achievable accuracy and the measurement rate depends on the selected measurement principle, on the sensor accuracy, and on the adopted signal processing, leading to tradeoffs between performance, cost, and power consumption, which affect the lifetime of battery powered units.

In this regard, a strong interest is emerging in the methods implemented in smartphones, as these widespread platforms are equipped with multiple sensors, support various RF communication protocols, feature powerful data processors, and may consist of seamless interoperation with GNSS positioning and with applications that exploit positioning results.

This Special Issue targets novel research results for IPTs, focused mostly, but not exclusively, on sensor characteristics, node architecture and connectivity, design tradeoffs, positioning algorithms, and overall positioning and tracking performance.

Prof. Dr. Antonio Moschitta
Prof. Dr. Jörg Blankenbach
Prof. Dr. Domenico Capriglione
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Electronics is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.