The accuracy of indoor wireless localization systems can be substantially enhanced by map-awareness, i.e., by the knowledge of the map of the environment in which localization signals are acquired. In fact, this knowledge can be exploited to cancel out, at least to some extent, the signal degradation due to propagation through physical obstructions, i.e., to the so called non-line-of-sight bias. This result can be achieved by developing novel localization techniques that rely on proper map-aware statistical modelling of the measurements they process. In this manuscript a unified statistical model for the measurements acquired in map-aware localization systems based on time-of-arrival and received signal strength techniques is developed and its experimental validation is illustrated. Finally, the accuracy of the proposed map-aware model is assessed and compared with that offered by its map-unaware counterparts. Our numerical results show that, when the quality of acquired measurements is poor, map-aware modelling can enhance localization accuracy by up to 110% in certain scenarios.

Accuracy and complexity represent fundamental aspects of localization and tracking systems. In this manuscript the impact of a priori knowledge about agent position on the accuracy and the complexity of localization algorithms is investigated. In particular, first Cramer-Rao bounds on localization accuracy are derived under the assumption that a priori information is described by a map restricting the agent position to a specific region. Then, the computational complexity of optimal map-aware and map-unaware localization techniques is assessed. Our results evidence that: a) map-aware localization accuracy can be related to some geometrical features of the map but usually exhibits a complicated dependence on them; b) in some scenarios map-aware localization algorithms provide better accuracy than their map-unaware counterparts at comparable computational complexity.

The knowledge of the propagation environment can greatly improve the performance of indoor wireless localization systems, since it can be exploited to cancel out, at least to some extent, the effects of physical obstructions (e.g., walls) degrading the radio signals employed for localization. In indoor localization systems, the propagation environment can be described by maps (e.g., floor plans), which represent a valuable source of knowledge. In this paper a new map-aware statistical model for the measurements acquired in wireless localization systems based on received signal strength is proposed. Experimental results are processed to extract the parameters of the proposed model, which is then exploited to devise map-aware localization algorithms; these are capable of mitigating the non-line-of-sight bias introduced in the measurements by the obstructions modelled by the map. Our numerical results evidence that map-aware modelling can substantially improve localization accuracy in indoor scenarios with respect to map-unaware modelling.

Establishing bounds on the accuracy achievable by localization techniques represents a fundamental technical issue. Bounds on localization accuracy have been derived for cases in which the position of an agent is estimated on the basis of a set of observations and, possibly, of some a priori information related to them (e.g., information about anchor positions and properties of the communication channel). In this paper, new bounds are derived under the assumption that the localization system is map-aware, i.e., it can benefit not only from the availability of observations, but also from the a priori knowledge provided by the map of the environment where it operates. Our results show that: a) map-aware estimation accuracy can be related to some features of the map (e.g., its shape and area) even though, in general, the relation is complicated; b) maps are really useful in the presence of some combination of low SNRs and specific geometrical features of the map (e.g., the size of obstructions); c) in most cases, there is no need of refined maps since additional details do not improve estimation accuracy.

In this paper the problem of assessing bounds on the accuracy of pilot-based estimation of a bandlimited frequency selective communication channel is tackled. Mean square error is taken as a figure of merit in channel estimation and a tapped-delay line model is adopted to represent a continuous time channel via a finite number of unknown parameters. This allows to derive some properties of optimal waveforms for channel sounding and closed form Cramer-Rao bounds.