Multi-user indoor cooperative localization technology with opportunity encounters

Smartphone-based collaborative indoor localization technology is a rapidly evolving area of research that aims to provide convenient and accurate user indoor location information. This technology encourages users to collaborate with each other using sensors commonly found in smartphones, such as WiFi, Bluetooth, and inertial sensors. By collecting and sharing data from multiple users, the collaborative system can overcome the limitations of individual devices and improve localization accuracy and efficiency. However, the need for fingerprint database establishment, frequent calibration, and the effects of signal strength fluctuations still plagues the development of the technology. To address these limitations, this paper proposes a collaborative indoor localization scheme that combines smartphone WiFi hotspots for information transmission with inertial sensor data to improve localization accuracy. The proposed method does not require additional equipment or tedious fingerprint database collection, and the use of information on the trend of WiFi signal strength changes also reduces the impact of signal fluctuations to some extent. The collaborative scheme can estimate the relative position and exchange information in an environment without external devices, which is of great significance for collaborative work and emergency response in special situations. Extensive experiments conducted in our office area demonstrate the proposed solution’s ability to achieve satisfactory localization results.