Kalman Filter-Based Data Fusion of Wi-Fi RTT and PDR for Indoor Localization

The Fine Time Measurement (FTM) protocol introduced by IEEE 802.11 includes a new ranging method, named Wi-Fi Round Trip Time (Wi-Fi RTT), which can be used for indoor localization. Pedestrian Dead Reckoning (PDR) can provide accurate pedestrian tracking through inertial sensors in a short time. Information fusion of PDR and existing wireless technology is widely used in indoor localization to ensure the robustness and stability. In this paper, we propose a fusion indoor localization method of Wi-Fi RTT and PDR. Firstly, an adaptive filtering system consisting of multiple Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) and a new outlier detection method is proposed to reduce the localization error of Wi-Fi RTT. Secondly, the fusion algorithm based on the Federated Filter (FF) and observability is designed to combine Wi-Fi RTT with PDR. Finally, to further improve the localization performance of the fusion algorithm, a real-time smoothing method with fixed interval is used. We evaluate the proposed method in four different scenarios. The results show that the proposed indoor localization method has better stability and robustness, and the average localization error decreased by 37.4-67.6% compared with the classic EKF-based method.