Positioning for Visible Light Communication System Exploiting Multipath Reflections

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel uplink visible light positioning method that leverages multipath reflections, including diffuse components, to accurately determine user location indoors, achieving up to 5 cm accuracy with multiple detectors.

Contribution

It introduces a new positioning approach using uplink VLC signals that exploits multipath reflections, contrasting with previous methods that treat these reflections as noise.

Findings

Achieves 25 cm RMS accuracy with a single PD.

Improves to 5 cm RMS accuracy with four PDs.

Demonstrates feasibility of multipath-based positioning in VLC systems.

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce a new uplink visible light indoor positioning system that estimates the position of the users in the network-side of a visible light communications (VLC) system. This technique takes advantage of the diffuse components of the uplink channel impulse response for positioning, which has been considered as a destructive noise in existing visible light communication positioning literature. Exploiting the line of sight (LOS) component, the most significant diffusive component of the channel (the second power peak (SPP)), and the delay time between LOS and SPP, we present a proof of concept analysis for positioning using fixed reference points, i.e. uplink photodetectors (PDs). Simulation results show the root mean square (RMS) positioning accuracy of 25 cm and 5 cm for one and 4 PDs scenarios, respectively.