A Novel NLOS Error Compensation Method Based IMU for UWB Indoor Positioning System

Electromagnetic wave is susceptible to the multipath effect, especially in complex indoor environment. As transmission of non-line of sight (NLOS), it leads to bigger measurement error, which makes positioning accuracy decline. In the paper, we aim to compensate the measurement error mainly affected by the NLOS to enhance the positioning accuracy. Conceptions of “virtual inertial point” and “environmental factor” are introduced, and moreover acceleration data of inertial measurement unit (IMU) are adopted. A novel and simple NLOS error compensation method for high accuracy indoor positioning system based UWB is proposed. Based on the principle of inertia, IMU can be used to fix motion trend of tag and to get coordinate of virtual inertial point. The measurement coordinate can be acquired by UWB system. We can calculate the distances between virtual inertial point and real measurement in same area, respectively under line of sight (LOS) and NLOS in advance. The ratio of two different distances can be defined as environmental factor, which is mainly used to reflect the influence of NLOS on positioning accuracy quantitatively relative to LOS in the paper. Environmental factor, as the weighted coefficient, is adopted to merge coordinates of the virtual inertial point and measurement to obtain the coordinate compensated under NLOS. It is a process of scaling measurement down to user-defined area for positioning accuracy requirement to reduce the impact of NLOS. At last, Kalman Filter is used to smooth the set of coordinate compensated under NLOS to further improve positioning accuracy. Experimental results show that our method can effectively compensate the NLOS error in the indoor positioning system based ultra-wide band (UWB) technology. The positioning accuracy is improved nearby 80% in NLOS area.