IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 8, NO.
11, JUNE 1, 2021
A Novel 3-D Indoor Localization Algorithm
Based on BLE and Multiple Sensors
Yue Yu , Student Member, IEEE, Ruizhi Chen , Liang Chen , Xingyu Zheng,
Dewen Wu, Wei Li, and Yuan Wu
Abstract—Indoor wireless localization using Bluetooth low
energy (BLE) beacons has attracted considerable attention due
to its extensive distribution and low cost properties. This arti-
cle proposes a novel 3-D indoor localization algorithm which
uses the combination of BLE and multiple sensors (3D-LBMS).
The inertial navigation system (INS) and pedestrian dead reck-
oning (PDR) mechanizations are combined for accurate heading
and speed estimation, which contains a multilevel constraints-
based quasistatic magnetic field (QSMF) detection algorithm.
In addition, dynamic-time-warping (DTW)-based BLE landmark
detection algorithm is proposed to provide absolute 3-D loca-
tion reference to multiple sensors-based positioning method, and
the detected BLE landmark points are also used to calibrate
the parameter of step-length calculation. Finally, the adaptive
unscented Kalman filter (AUKF) is applied to fuse the results of
INS/PDR mechanizations, QSMF and locations of detected BLE
landmarks to achieve accurate and concrete multisource-based
3-D indoor localization performance. The experimental results
show that the proposed 3-D-LBMS is proved to achieve meter-
level 2-D positioning accuracy and submeter level 3-D altitude
estimation accuracy in typical indoor environments.
Index Terms—Bluetooth low energy (BLE), indoor localization,
multiple sensors, unscented Kalman filter (KF).
I. I NTRODUCTION
URRENTLY, indoor positioning has become a signif-
C icant research topic in the fields of artificial intelli-
gence (AI) and Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications (e.g.,
smart city and emergency rescue) [1]. A variety of tech-
nologies, such as ultrawideband (UWB) [2], Bluetooth [3],
Wi-Fi [4], Acoustic source [5], Image source [6], and built-
in sensors [7] have been applied for indoor positioning and
navigation.
Nowadays, the smartphone-based indoor positioning can be
mainly divided into three types.
1) Relative localization based on microelectro-mechanical-
system (MEMS) sensors, usually contains the inertial
navigation system (INS) or pedestrian dead reck-
oning (PDR) mechanizations, by collecting the
Manuscript received November 29, 2020; revised January 2, 2021; accepted
January 27, 2021. Date of publication February 1, 2021; date of current ver-
sion May 21, 2021. This work was supported in part by the National Key
Research and Development Program of China under Grant 2016YFB0502200
and Grant 2016YFB0502201, and in part by NSFC under Grant 91638203.
(Corresponding author: Ruizhi Chen.)
The authors are with the State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering
in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan University, Wuhan
430000, China (e-mail: ruizhi.chen@whu.edu.cn).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JIOT.2021.3055794
2327-4662 
c 2021 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
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9359
data from smartphones integrated sensors, for
example, the accelerometer, magnetometer, and
gyroscope [8], [9].
2) Absolute localization based on wireless/acoustic signals
or computer vision (CV) [10], [11]. Multiple charac-
teristics extracted from wireless/acoustic signals can be
applied for indoor positioning purposes, for example,
received signal strength indication (RSSI) [12], Time
of Arrival (TOA) [13], round-trip time (RTT) [14],
and Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA) [15]. Besides,
fingerprinting-based method is also widely used in case
of unknown locations of wireless stations [16].
3) Multisource fusion-based indoor localization, which
combines the advantages of both relative and absolute
location sources and provides more stable and accurate
positioning information [14], [17]–[19].
The Bluetooth 4.0 protocol was released to promote the
development of the IoT and smart devices, and the Bluetooth
low energy (BLE) node (the device which supports the
Bluetooth 4.0 protocol or higher) can communicate directly
with almost all the IoT terminals. Due to the low cost char-
acteristic of BLE nodes, the BLE-based location source has
become popular in applications of indoor localization [20].
Normally, the BLE-based indoor localization usually uses
received signal strength indication (RSSI) data for real-time
ranging between local BLE nodes and mobile terminals or
uses the fingerprinting-based method to get real-time loca-
tion of the pedestrian [21], [22], thus is usually influenced
by multipath propagation and Non-Line-of-Sight (NLOS)
indoors, which may lead to the poor location performance
especially when pedestrians move far from BLE nodes [23].
In addition, the proximity detection algorithm can also be
used for BLE-based indoor localization which can effectively
reduce environmental interference [3]. Compared with Wi-Fi
RSSI-based positioning method, BLE RSSI proves much
higher sampling rate, therefore can be optimized before local-
ization phase [24]. Different from RSSI-based methods, the
performance of multiple sensors-based indoor localization is
subjected to the errors of step-length calculation and head-
ing deviation therefore can only maintain the accuracy within
a short period [9].
In order to solve the above challenges, this article proposes
a robust multisource-based 3-D indoor localization algorithm
using the hybrid location sources of BLE and multiple sensors
(3-D-LBMS). The contributions of this work are summarized
as follows.
9360
1) This article achieves the combination of INS and
PDR mechanizations (PINS) which is able to provide
more accurate heading and walking speed estimation
information. The quasistatic magnetic field (QSMF)
period is recognized in order to compensate the cumula-
tive error caused by heading update, and the PDR mech-
anization is used to provide measured values of walking
speed and position increment for INS mechanization.
2) This article uses the DTW algorithm to detect BLE land-
mark points based on the real-time constructed RSSI
map with the combination of RSSI ranging model, and
the 3-D information of the detected BLE node is used to
calibrate the step-length parameter and provide absolute
3-D location reference to multiple sensors.
3) Based on the results of multiple sensors and BLE land-
mark detection, the 3-D-LBMS is proposed. A real-time
adaptive unscented Kalman filter (AUKF) is adopted to
fuse the information of INS/PDR, QSMF and 3-D loca-
tions of detected landmark points. The combination of
both BLE and MEMS sensors-based methods signifi-
cantly increases the precision of multisource-based 3-D
indoor localization.
The arrangement of this article is as follows. Section II
introduces the related work. Section III details the INS/PDR
mechanizations. Section IV presents the QSMF detection algo-
rithm, BLE-based landmark detection and final 3-D-LBMS
algorithm. Section V describes the experimental results of
proposed 3-D-LBMS. Section VI concludes this article.
II. R ELATED W ORK
In order to improve the performance of indoor localization,
a series of indoor localization systems have been developed
in the past years, including built-in sensors, UWB, Wi-Fi,
BLE, acoustic source, and others. This section focuses on the
two types of indoor localization systems that use BLE and
multiple sensors-based location sources and further presents
the existing challenges toward the pedestrian-based indoor
positioning.
A. BLE-Based Indoor Positioning Method
BLE attracts more and more researchers for its low cost
and low power consumption properties. Different from the
other location sources, BLE nodes are more convenient and
universal for deployment and maintenance.
Martin et al. [25] designed a variety of experimentations
to verify the feasibility and performance of BLE nodes-based
indoor positioning algorithm, using acquired RSSI to estimate
the distance between smartphone and deployed BLE nodes.
The location of the pedestrian is acquired by the weighted
least-squares (WLS) algorithm using multiple BLE signals.
Paek et al. [26] compared the factors which influence
the accuracy of BLE-based localization, including different
types of smartphones, the classification and indoor deploy-
ment of BLE nodes, transmission power, obstacles, and others.
The experimental results prove that the performance of BLE-
based indoor positioning largely depends upon the propagation
model and corresponding indoor environments.
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IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 8, NO. 11, JUNE 1, 2021
Ng [27] validated the accuracy of iBeacon RSSI-based prop-
agation model and got the conclusion that the propagation
model cannot maintain high accuracy in case of long-distance
ranging. Therefore, iBeacon is usually applied for proximity
detection. By calibrating pedestrian’s heading using reliable
magnetic data, pedestrians are able to obtain their real-time
location information.
Faragher and Harle [28] proposed a fingerprint-based local-
ization algorithm using RSSI acquired from local BLE nodes.
The experimental site is divided into square blocks of the
length 1 m, and each area has its own fingerprints to con-
struct the radio map. In addition, they analyzed the effects
of the choose parameter, such as beacon density, transmit
power, and transmit frequency. Finally, the comprehensive
experimentation was designed to compare with Wi-Fi-based
fingerprinting.
Kriz et al. [29] constructed fingerprints using both BLE
and Wi-Fi information. The BLE nodes are deployed in Wi-
Fi denied indoor environments. The real-time position of the
pedestrian is recognized based on the weighted k-nearest
neighbor (WKNN) method using the acquired hybrid RSSI
information acquired from both Wi-Fi and BLE.
To summarize, BLE-based indoor localization algorithm can
mainly be classified into fingerprinting and RSSI propagation
model. However, the accuracy and stability of BLE signal
propagation model is severely subjected to the complex and
changeable indoor environments while fingerprint-based posi-
tioning methods require labor-intensive maintenance. Various
experiments show that precise indoor localization requires the
combination of different location sources.
B. Multiple Sensors-Based Positioning Method
INS mechanization is updated using inertial sensors data to
track the carrier’s 3-D attitude and position information.
Nowadays, with the development of MEMS sensors, the
smartphone integrated sensors are already able to meet the
requirements of low cost navigation purposes. PDR is aimed at
pedestrians-based localization, which contains two main parts:
1) step detection and step-length estimation and 2) heading
fusion and calibration.
During the procedure of pedestrian’s walking periods, the
collected acceleration data shows regular changes, therefore
the biomechanical models are often used to detect pedestrian
gait features and calculate the step-length [30]. The advan-
tage of using biomechanical models is that the parameter of
step-length calculation can be determined according to the
relationships between human features and measured distance.
However, due to the complexity of the human motion modes
and the diversity of handheld modes of smartphones, the accu-
racy of proposed step detection and step-length estimation
models are usually unsatisfactory, the adaptive adjustment is
required to adapt to different characteristics of the pedes-
trian [31], [32].
Traditional INS mechanization usually extracts gyroscope
data to track the attitude change of the carrier, while the
accuracy of the smartphone integrated gyroscope is always
YU et al.: NOVEL 3-D INDOOR LOCALIZATION ALGORITHM BASED ON BLE AND MULTIPLE SENSORS
subjected to the noise interference and zero bias instabil-
ity which may cause the fast deviation of smartphone-based
estimated heading. An effective INS-based error elimination
method is zero-velocity update (ZUPT), which was proposed
for the first time in the NavShoe project. The experimen-
tal results in this project show that the application of ZUPT
effectively improves the MEMS sensors-based localization
performance [33].
Kuang et al. [34] used position increment and walking
speed provided by PDR to decrease the cumulative error of
INS mechanization based on an enhanced extended Kalman
filter (EKF), and analyzed the navigation performance in
four basic phone positions, the final experiments proved that
the combination of INS and PDR effectively improved the
accuracy of heading estimation and final DR.
Of the above-mentioned multiple sensors-based methods,
the MEMS sensors integrated in smartphones can be used as
an autonomous location source in the case of no other location
sources existing. However, the multiple sensors-based posi-
tioning method can get only relative position of the pedestrian
and cannot effectively eliminate existed cumulative positioning
errors, thus, the multiple sensors-based approach is normally
integrated with other absolute location sources to adapt to
different environments and users.
C. Challenges Toward Pedestrian-Based Indoor Positioning
In order to realize a concrete and accurate multisource
fusion-based 3-D indoor localization algorithm, we need to
handle the following challenges.
1) Cumulative Error of Multiple Sensors: During the DR
procedure, the current position is calculated by the estimated
heading and speed information based on the previous head-
ing and position, including INS and PDR. The errors of
speed estimation and heading deviation lead to the decrease
of positioning accuracy.
Shin and Park [35] compared the most existing step-length
calculation methods, including different models, techniques,
and deployments. They found that the existing public data
sets and evaluation methods between different algorithms of
step-length estimation are not sufficient.
Weinberg [36] found through a variety of experiments
that the estimated step length contains about 40% measure-
ment error during pedestrian’s walking procedure even when
they are walking on the same speed, thus, the calibration of
the step-length parameter is required before the use of each
calculation model.
Combettes and Renaudin [37] presented a robust
smartphone-based heading fusion algorithm using the com-
bination of statistical models and likelihood maximization.
In this method, the pedestrian’s motion modes and other
characteristics are considered and the error of 1.4◦ to 15.3◦ is
proved based on various “1km walk” tests in different indoor
environments.
2) Interference of Artificial Magnetic Field: The Earth’s
magnetic field maintains an almost constant value at its sur-
face. While in the complex and changeable indoor buildings,
the local magnetic field (LMF) is easily affected by the
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9361
electronic devices or others indoors which lead to the deviation
of magnetic heading.
Afzal et al. [38] presented various experiments in differ-
ent indoor environments and found that the different types of
building materials lead to different results on magnetometer-
based heading, which can lead to the error of 100◦ according
to the estimated heading. Therefore, the disturbed magnetic
data should be detected to decrease the influence of artifi-
cial interference. Afzal et al. [39] proved that the disturbed
magnetic field may cause unpredictable impact since verti-
cally polarized magnetic fields will affect the magnitude but
not the horizontal heading.
Li et al. [40] proposed an autonomous calibration algo-
rithm toward gyroscope update without the need for external
equipment. The pseudo observations, QSMF and acceleration
data are extracted to restrain the deviation of gyroscope update.
The calibrated error of gyro bias under the different handhold
modes was decreased from several deg/s to under 0.15 deg/s
indoors and 0.1 deg/s outdoors.
3) Establishment of Signal Propagation Model in Complex
Indoor Environments: It is not difficult to get real-time RSSI
information from local wireless stations for example Wi-Fi
APs and BLE nodes, while the RSSI signal is subjected
to multipath propagation and NLOS interference in dynamic
environments, resulting in significant deviation in RSSI obser-
vations [41], [42]. In order to promote the performance of
RSSI-based positioning, fingerprint and proximity detection-
based methods are applied to enhance indoor localization
performance [43], [44].
Mackey et al. [45] improved the performance of BLE nodes-
based proximity detection using three different Bayesian filters
which contains a Kalman filter (KF), a particle filter (PF), and
a nonparametric information filter (NIF). Experimental results
in different environments shown that the Bayesian filters can
improve the performance of proximity detection up to 30%
compared with the traditional filter.
Zhuang and El-Sheimy [46] proposed a tightly coupled (TC)
EKF-based localization system using Wi-Fi and smartphone
self-contained sensors. 15 states for MEMS and 1 state (Wi-
Fi RSS bias) are extracted as the state vector and RSSI-based
propagation model is adopted as the observation vector. The
designed experimentation proved that the positioning error of
the proposed TC system was within 3.47 m in typical indoor
environments.
Aiming at multisource-based indoor localization using BLE
and MEMS sensors, various fusion methods have been
applied. Dinh et al. [47] proposed a PF-based fusion system
using the combination of BLE fingerprint, trilateration, and
PDR. Besides, the KF approach is applied in [6] which inte-
grated the PDR and BLE proximity detection. In addition,
a KF-based fusion model using trilateration and dead reckon-
ing is proposed in [48]. Among the existing fusion methods,
the accuracy improvements of different location sources and
corresponding fusion methods comprise the main part of
multisource-based indoor localization.
To improve the stability and accuracy of multisource fusion-
based 3-D indoor localization, this article proposes the 3-
D-LBMS algorithm. On the basis of previous research, this
9362
Fig. 1. Framework of 3-D-LBMS algorithm.
article provides specific solutions to the above challenges.
The 3-D-LBMS combines the BLE and multiple sensors-based
location sources to make the two advantages complemen-
tary. First, the raw sensor data acquired from the gyroscope,
accelerometer, magnetometer and barometer is collected to
realize INS and PDR mechanizations, respectively, and the
QSMF periods are detected in order to extract stable mag-
netometer data and compensate gyroscope’s cumulative error;
second, the real-time RSSI data acquired from surrounding
BLE nodes is collected and processed to generate the RSSI
map and the DTW algorithm is applied to detect the BLE land-
mark points, the detected BLE landmarks which contain the
3-D location information are used to calibrate the step-length
parameter and provide absolute reference to multiple sensors-
based method; finally, a robust AUKF is adopted to fuse the
information of INS/PDR, QSMF data and 3-D locations of
detected BLE landmarks in order to provide accurate and con-
crete 3-D localization performance. The whole framework of
proposed 3-D-LBMS is shown in Fig. 1.
III. M ULTIPLE S ENSORS -BASED L OCALIZATION
Smartphone built-in sensors can provide pedestrian’s speed
and attitude information with much higher frequency com-
pared with other location sources. The accuracy of MEMS
sensors-based method is subjected to the cumulative error
caused by the low cost sensors and magnetic interference. In
this section, INS and PDR mechanizations are represented,
respectively, and the results of INS/PDR mechanizations are
further integrated in AUKF with locations of detected BLE-
based landmarks in Section IV.
A. INS Mechanization-Based Localization
INS mechanization is widely applied for fields of pedes-
trian and vehicle navigation, which can provide real-time 3-D
motion information of the carrier with high sampling rate. The
acceleration and angular rate data collected from integrated
inertial sensors are combined in the INS mechanization to cal-
culate the real-time 3-D position, velocity, and attitude of the
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IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 8, NO. 11, JUNE 1, 2021
carrier. The INS mechanization is presented by [34]
⎡ n⎤ ⎡ ⎤
ṙ  D−1 vn 
⎣ v̇n ⎦ = ⎣ Cn f b − 2 n +  n vn + gn ⎦ (1)
n b  ie en 
Ċb Cnb  bib −  bin
where rn = [ φ λ h ]T indicates the current 3-D location of
the pedestrian; vn = [ vN vE vD ]T indicates the updated 3-D
velocity in the navigation coordinate system. Cnb indicates the
transformation matrix which is used to convert the coordinate
from the body coordinate system to the navigation coordinate
system; f b indicates the measured acceleration value in the
body coordinate system; gn represents the local gravity vector
in the navigation coordinate system;  nie and  nen represents
the skew-symmetric matrix of the rotation vector;  bib and
 bin represent the skew-symmetric matrices of the gyroscope-
based angular rate vector; and D−1 indicates standard 3 ×
3 matrix related to the latitude φ and the ellipsoidal height h
of the object.
Due to the poor accuracy of MEMS sensors, the navigation
error that rely on the INS mechanization will quickly diverge
over time, thus the observed position increment and walk-
ing speed information provided by PDR provides an effective
approach to limit the cumulative error of INS mechanization.
B. PDR Mechanization-Based Localization
PDR mechanization is developed aiming at the pedestrian-
based navigation, by extracting characteristics of pedestrians’
motion modes to realize the real-time positioning. During
the procedure of pedestrian’s walking periods, the collected
acceleration data shows regular changes, therefore the biome-
chanical models are often used to detect pedestrian gait fea-
tures and calculate the step-length [35]. The norm of extracted
accelerometer data is calculated as

Normacc = a2x + a2y + a2z (2)
where Normacc represents the norm of real-time accelerometer
data, ax , ay , and az indicate the extracted triaxial acceleration
information.
Due to the complexity and randomness of pedestrian’s
movement, the raw acceleration data is affected by noises and
need to be smoothed. Low-pass filters are usually used to pro-
cess raw acceleration data in order to obtain more obvious gait
characteristics.
Due to the randomness of the handheld modes of the pedes-
trian, the filtered acceleration data still contains multiple peaks
which may lead to the wrong step count. Thus, the multi-
peak recognition method which contains several constrains are
presented in the following equation:
T step > δ1
(3)
|Normacc −g|<δ2
where Tstep represents the time interval calculated by the two
adjacent gaits; g indicates the local gravity value; δ1 represents
minimax time threshold of two detected steps; δ2 indicates
the maximum allowable acceleration. The final detected step
information is shown in Fig. 2.
YU et al.: NOVEL 3-D INDOOR LOCALIZATION ALGORITHM BASED ON BLE AND MULTIPLE SENSORS
Fig. 2. Performance of step detection.
An empirical model characterizes the relationship between
step length and pedestrian’s motion characteristics which is
proposed by Weinberg [36] is shown as
L = K 4 Amax − Amin
where Amax and Amin indicate the detected peak and val-
ley acceleration values during one gait cycle, K represents
the adjustable parameters of the step length which can be
calculated in
destimated
K= (5)
dtrue
where destimated and dtrue indicate the experimental and ground-
truth distance during estimation.
In the PDR mechanization, after the estimation of step
length, the required heading information is provided by the
fusion of both INS and PDR mechanizations to restrain the
accumulative error. The real-time 2-D location of the pedes-
trian is updated based on the last positioning result, which is
shown as follows:
Px (k) = Px (k − 1) + L(k) · sin(θ (k))
(6)
Py (k) = Py (k − 1) + L(k) · cos(θ (k))
where [Px (k), Py (k)] and [Px (k − 1), Py (k − 1)] indicate the
pedestrian’s location at the moment k − 1 and k; L(k) and θ (k)
represent the calculated step length and direction at epoch k.
In order to get the altitude information indoors, the barom-
eter is used to estimate the altitude difference in 3-D indoor
buildings. The relationship between height and barometer-
measured air pressure is described as [49]
1.0 
100p 5.255
hb = 44330 · 1.0 − (7)
p0
where hb represents the real-time height estimated by the
barometer, p and p0 represent the measured air pressure and
the sea level reference pressure, respectively.
IV. I NTEGRATED L OCALIZATION BASED ON AUKF
In order to realize precise and concrete performance of
multisource fusion-based indoor localization, different loca-
tion sources should be combined. In this article, AUKF is
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9363
adopted to integrate both BLE and multiple sensors-based
methods, in which the INS mechanization is regarded as the
state model and the PDR mechanization, QSMF result and
3-D location of detected BLE landmarks are regarded as the
observation model.
A. Detection of Quasistatic Magnetic Field
The LMF is regarded as the quasistatic state if the norm of
magnetometer data remains constant during the pedestrian’s
walking period. The detected QSMF periods can be used to
provide a relatively accurate LMF reference for gyroscope-
based heading estimation and can also decrease the effect of
artificial interference indoors. The feature of magnetic data can
be extracted as [34]
n  b  b 
    b
M̃  − M̃  ≈ 0, M̃ = m2x + m2y + m2z (8)
k+1 k
k=0
b
where M̃ represents the modulus of collected magnetic data in
the body coordinate system; mx , my , and mz indicate the mea-
(4) sured trimagnetometer data; k represents the first epoch of
a detected QSMF period and n indicates the length of detected
QSMF period. Since the magnetic field strength remains con-
stant when the pedestrian remains static, thus, the QSMF
detection algorithm is always performed during pedestrian’s
walking period.
In this article, multilevel constraints are used to recognize
the QSMF period, the whole detection procedure is shown as
follows.
1) Pedestrian’s Motion Pattern Recognition: The modulus
value of gyroscope data and increment value of accelerometer
data are extracted to identify the pedestrian’s motion pattern,
QSMF is only detected when the pedestrian walks straight
or remains static. The modulus value of gyroscope data and
increment value of accelerometer are shown in
⎧ 
⎨ Ngyro = g2 + g2 + g2
x y z
(9)
⎩ Aacc = a2 + a2 + a2 − g
x y z
where gx , gy , and gz represent the measured trigyroscope data;
ax , ay , and az represent the measured triaccelerometer data;
Ngyro and Aacc remain in a certain range when the pedestrian
is walking straight forward or remains static over a short period
of time.
2) Extraction of Pedestrian’s Gait Feature: A complete gait
cycle during the pedestrian’s walking period includes incre-
ment value of accelerometer data Aacc changing from zero to
peak value, then to valley value and finally return to zero, just
like this: Aacc : 0 → Apeak → 0 → Avalley → 0. The mean-
square error (MSE) and interquartile range (IQR) of magnetic
heading in the sliding time window with a length of n are
calculated as follows:
   i 2
θMSE (k) = 1n · ni=0 θmag (k) − θmag (k) (10)
θIQR (k) = θQ3 (k) − θQ1 (k)
where θMSE (k) and θIQR (k) indicate the MSE and IQR val-
ues of the acquired magnetic heading, θmag (k) represents the
9364 IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 8, NO. 11, JUNE 1, 2021

average magnetic heading in the sliding time window. θmag

i (k)

represents the real-time measured magnetic heading.

3) QSMF Detection During Periods of Gait Cycles: After
recognizing pedestrian’s motion pattern and acquiring the
heading information in each gait cycle, multilevel constraints
are presented to detect the QSMF state under the above
conditions
⎧
⎪
⎪ 0 < Aacc < h1
⎪
⎪
⎨ 0 < N gyro < h2 Fig. 3. Schematic of RSSI landmark detection.
θMSE < h3 , θIQR < h4 (11)
⎪
⎪ n  b  b TABLE I
⎪
⎪     RSSI M AP OF L OCAL BLE N ODES
⎩ n · k=0 M̃ 
1
− M̃  < h5
k+1 k

where h1 ∼ h5 represent the thresholds which are uses to

identify the QSMF state in local MLF. The extracted magnetic
data is fused by the AUKF, which will be described in the
following section.

B. BLE Landmark Detection and Step-Length Correction The reference BLE RSSI distribution δrefer =
The stability of RSSI data acquired from local BLE nodes is {q1 , q2 , . . . , qn } is shown in Fig. 3, which can be auto-
subjected to the multipath propagation and NLOS effects when matically generated by (12) within a fixed distance range. The
the pedestrian walking in the complex indoor environments. real-time RSSI information acquired from local BLE nodes
The accuracy of RSSI-based propagation model may decrease contained in the database will be collected and described
with the growing distance between smartphone and local BLE as the RSSI map after smoothed by Gaussian mixture
nodes [23]. In this work, BLE RSSI-based propagation model model (GMM) [51], the processed RSSI map is presented in
is presented as follows [3]: Table I.
After constructing the local RSSI map, the RSSI distribu-
μ tion from each local BLE node will be extracted from the
ξr (μ) = ξ0 (μ0 ) − 10β lg + +ϕ (12)
μ0 RSSI map, described as δk = {c1 , c2 , . . . , cm }, and then using
DTW algorithm to calculate the similarity between the refer-
where ξr (μ) represents the idealized RSSI value at distance ence distribution and real-time extracted distribution based on
μ, μ0 is the reference distance, ξ0 (μ0 ) indicates the refer- the following equation:
ence RSSI value at distance μ0 , β represents the path loss
exponent, which conforms the Gaussian distribution with the DTW(δrefer , δk ) = Dist(qn , cm )

mean of zero. ϕ is the measured noise which follows Gaussian + min D(qn−1 , cm ), D(qn , cm−1 )
distribution.  represents the human occlusion factor related 
D(qn−1 , cm−1 ) < h
parameter. When the pedestrian moves toward the BLE node,
s.t. d(t) < (13)
 is set as zero. When the pedestrian moves away from the
BLE node,  is increased to compensate the RSSI loss due where DTW(δrefer , δk ) presents the cumulative distance
to the occlusion. between two RSSI distributions, Dist(qn , cm ) indicates the
Normally, the accuracy of presented RSSI propagation Euclidean distance between each two points of distributions.
model is subjected to the multipath propagation and NLOS in A new BLE landmark is successfully detected when the DTW
complex indoor environments. In this work, a novel BLE land- value and real-time distance between detected BLE node and
mark detection algorithm is proposed to avoid the interference smartphone d (t) reach the set thresholds h and .
of indoor environments. When the pedestrian walks straight between two detected
When the pedestrian walks along a deployed BLE node, BLE landmark points, the step-length parameter K in
the received RSSI signal will generate signal peaks which can (5) can be calibrated by the location information of detected
be used for landmark detection, as shown in Fig. 3. The raw landmarks
RSSI data contains noises which may cause the signal fluctu- ⎧ dreal
⎪
⎪ K = destimated
ation. However, the RSSI signal can also fluctuate even after ⎪
⎪
⎨ dreal = PBLE (n + 1) − PBLE (n)
smoothing because of multipath propagation and NLOS. In 
this article, dynamic-time-warping (DTW) algorithm is applied ⎪ destimated = N i=1 Lstep (i)
(14)
⎪
⎪ < A < h , < < h
to detect the local BLE landmark, using RSSI data in a period ⎪
⎩ s.t. 0 acc 1 0 Ngyro 2

of time. DTW is usually applied to align and measure the (θEKF − θRefer ) < γ
similarity between two temporal sequences of data, which is where PBLE (n + 1) and PBLE (n) represent the absolute posi-
widely applied in fields for example speech recognition and tions of two adjacent BLE nodes, Lstep (i) is the detected step
magnetic field-based positioning [50]. length when walking passed the two adjacent BLE nodes.

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YU et al.: NOVEL 3-D INDOOR LOCALIZATION ALGORITHM BASED ON BLE AND MULTIPLE SENSORS 9365

Normally, two adjacent landmark points can provide an abso- estimation result, which is calculated by [33]
lute heading which can be used to compare with the fused  T
heading when the pedestrian is recognized in case of walking vnPDR = ts −tLss−1 0 0 (18)
straight forward between two BLE landmarks, the parameter
K will be calibrated automatically under above constraints. where Ls represents
 the measured step length based on PDR
mechanization, ts , ts−1 indicates one step period. The ZUPT
is applied and PDR-based walking speed is set as zero when
T
C. Integrated 3-D Indoor Localization Based on AUKF
the pedestrian remains static, in this case, vnPDR ≈ 0 0 0 ,
INS and PDR are two main approaches toward smartphone and the ZARU-based observed value can also be applied
built-in sensors-based pedestrian indoor localization. The INS to control the cumulative error of heading estimation. The
mechanization provides much higher frequency of position observed heading information model in the navigation coordi-
and attitude information. However, the performance of the nate system is presented as follows [34]:
INS mechanization is subjected to the fast diverging error
of MEMS sensors therefore cannot provide reliable location δzψ = ψINS
n
− ψrefer
n
= δψ + nψ (19)
information for a longer time [40].
where ψINS
n represents the estimated heading by INS mecha-
In this article, a more robust MEMS sensors-based inte-
nization, ψrefer
n indicates the extracted pseudoheading at the
grated positioning algorithm is proposed using the combina-
first epoch of the quasistatic period, and nψ indicate the
tion of INS and PDR mechanizations. In the proposed PINS,
measurement noise.
the raw data acquired from triaxial accelerometer and triaxial
The observation model aimed at position increment in the
gyroscope is updated by the INS mechanization based on the
navigation coordinate system is presented as
last moment result. Second, the motion mode of the pedestrian
is predicted using the collected acceleration and angular rate. δznp = pnPDR − pnINS (20)
If the pedestrian’s motion is recognized as “static,” ZUPT and
zero angle rate update (ZARU) are applied in the procedure where pnPDR represents the real-time position estimated by
of INS mechanization to constrain the navigation deviation. In PDR mechanization and barometer-based altitude increment
addition, raw magnetic data is used to detect the QSMF periods in (6) and (7), pnINS represents the INS mechanization-based
in surrounding environment, and the detected QSMF periods position update result.
are extracted to calibrate the drift error of heading estimation. When a new BLE landmark is detected, the 3-D loca-
In addition, PDR-originated walking speed and step-length tion information of detected BLE node is applied as the
information are combined to provide the measured velocity observed value to further eliminate the cumulative error of
and position increment, which are finally fused by AUKF. INS mechanization, in this case, (20) can also be described as
In this article, AUKF is applied to fuse all the INS/PDR
δznp = pnBLE − pnINS = δp + nBLE (21)
information, ZUPT/ZARU, QSMF and landmark detection
results together in order to eliminate the cumulative error of where pnBLE represents the 3-D location of the detected BLE
multiple sensors-based INS mechanization. The state vector of landmark, the measured noise is described as
AUKF is shown as [34] ∂
  
 T nBLE ∼ vnINS (τ )dτ (22)
δx = (δpn )1×3 (δvn )1×3 ψ 1×3 bg 1×3 (ba )1×3 (15)
τ =0
where δpn , δvn , and ψ represent the error vectors of the INS
where vnINS (τ ) indicates the measured INS-based velocity dur-
mechanization in the navigation coordinate system; bg and ba
ing the period of time window used in GMM smoother, τ is
represent the zero bias of inertial sensors. The discrete-time
the timestamp, ∂ is the length of time window.
AUKF state model and observation model are presented as
In this article, the extracted magnetic feature during QSMF
δxk = Ak−1,k δxk−1 + ωk periods is applied to improve the performance of heading
(16)
δzk = Hk δxk + υk calculation. The LMF is calibrated at the beginning of each
QSMF period and assumed as the reference magnetic field
where δxk and δzk represents the state vector and observed
vector at the moment k, respectively; Ak−1,k indicates the state mnrefer = Cn,1
b
· mbk,1 (23)
transition matrix from the moment k − 1 to the moment k, and
Hk represents the observation matrix at the moment k. ωk and where mbk,1 indicates the first epoch of detected QSMF period
b represents the current attitude matrix. mn
υk indicate the state and observation noise at the moment k. in b-frame, Cn,1 refer is
In the measured model, the walking speed and step-length used as reference LMF in QSMF periods. The final observation
information provided by PDR and data extracted from QSMF model for magnetic field in the n-frame is presented as [40]
periods are ranged as the observed value. The observation
δznm = Cn,k
b
· mbk − mnrefer (24)
model for velocity in the n-frame is given by
δznv = vnPDR − vnINS (17) where mbk indicates the measured magnetic data in QSMF
b represents the current attitude matrix. The mea-
periods, Cn,k
where vnINS represents the INS mechanization-based speed esti- sured value is used for calibrating the drift error caused by
mation, vnPDR represents the step-length-based walking speed INS-based heading estimation.

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9366 IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 8, NO. 11, JUNE 1, 2021

Finally, the AUKF is applied to fuse all the state and 6) Calculating the predicted observation value according to
observed values together to realize an accurate and con- the updated sigma points and corresponding covariance
crete multisource-based 3-D indoor localization solution. The matrix
AUKF uses unscented transformation (UT) to adapt the non- ∧ 
2ε
linear system equation to the standard KF under the linear δ Z(k + 1|k) = w(η) δz(η) (k + 1|k) (31)
assumption, instead of linearizing the nonlinear function to η=0
achieve recursive filtering like EKF, which can achieve much 
2ε !
∧
higher nonlinear fusion accuracy. The procedure of proposed ζ zk zk = w(η) δz(η) (k + 1|k) − δ Z(k + 1|k)
AUKF is shown as follows. η=0
!T
1) Getting sigma point set and corresponding weight based ∧
× δz(η) (k + 1|k) − δ Z(k + 1|k) +R
on the previous state vector δX(k|k)
⎛  η=0 η=1∼ε (32)
√
(η) (k|k) = δX(k|k) δX(k|k) + (ε + γ )ζ (k|k) !
⎜ δx 
2ε ∧
⎜ ζ xk zk = w(η) δx(η) (k + 1|k) − δ Z(k + 1|k)
⎜ η=ε+1∼2ε
√ 
⎜ δX(k|k) − (ε + γ )ζ (k|k) η=0
⎜ !T
⎜ (0) γ ∧
⎝ w = ε+γ ,η = 0 × δx(η) (k + 1|k) − δ Z(k + 1|k) +R
γ
w(η) = 2(ε+γ ) , η = 1 ∼ 2ε (33)
(25)
where ζ zk zk represents the covariance matrix originated
where ε indicates the length of the state vector, η rep- from the predicted observation vector, and ζ xk zk is
resents the required number of sigma points, and γ the covariance matrix calculated by δZ∧ (k + 1|k) and
represents the weight related parameter. ζ (k|k) indicates x(η) (k + 1|k).
the state covariance matrix at epoch k. w(0) and w(η) 7) Calculating the Kalman gain
indicate the weights of the sigma points.
K(k + 1) = ζ xk zk ζ −1
zk zk . (34)
2) State prediction of each generated sigma point, using
current value of sigma points, η = 0, 1, 2, . . . , ε + 1 8) State value and covariance updating

δx(η) (k + 1|k) = Ak+1,k δx(η) (k) + ωk
where δx(η) (k + 1|k)
represents the predicted state value
of each sigma point at epoch k + 1.
3) Get the predicted value and covariance matrix by
weighting sigma point set

2ε
(η) (η)
δ X̂(k + 1|k) = w δx (k + 1|k)
η=0

2ε   at epoch k + 1, which can be used in the next AUKF
ζ (k + 1|k) = w(η) δ X̂(k + 1|k) − δx(η) (k + 1|k)
η=0
 T
× δ X̂(k + 1|k) − δx(η) (k + 1|k) + U
where δ X̂(k +1|k) and ζ (k +1|k) represent the predicted
state value and the state covariance matrix at epoch k+1.
4) Generating the new sigma point set using UT transform
based on the predicted state value

δx(η) (k + 1|k) = δ X̂(k + 1|k)δ X̂(k + 1|k)
+ (ε + γ )ζ (k + 1|k)δ X̂(k + 1|k)
− (ε + γ )ζ (k + 1|k) .
5) Observation prediction based on the predicted state value
of each sigma point, η = 0, 1, 2, . . . , 2ε + 1
δz(η) (k + 1|k) = Hk δx(η) (k + 1|k) + υk
where δz(η) (k +1|k)
represents the predicted observation
value of each sigma point at epoch k + 1.
δX(k + 1|k + 1) = δ X̂(k + 1|k) + K(k + 1)
(26) !
∧
× δZ(k + 1) − δ Z(k + 1|k)
(35)
ζ (k + 1|k + 1) = ζ (k + 1|k)
− K(k + 1)ζ zk zk K T (k + 1) (36)
where δX(k + 1|k + 1) and ζ (k + 1|k + 1) represent the
(27)
final updated state value and the state covariance matrix
procedure.
To summarize, the AUKF proposed in this work provides
a precise and concrete solution for multisource fusion-based
3-D indoor localization. First, the INS and PDR mechaniza-
(28) tions are combined in order to constrain the fast deviation error
in the procedure of INS update; second, the ZUPT and ZARU
measurements and the magnetic data during detected QSMF
periods are extracted to further eliminate the cumulative error
of INS-based heading and walking speed estimation; third, the
BLE-based landmark detection algorithm is applied to provide
absolute location results for MEMS sensors-based localization
method; finally, the AUKF is used to integrate all the mea-
sured information together aiming at realizing long-term and
(29) meterlevel multisource fusion-based 3-D indoor localization,
the combination of both relative and absolute location sources
realizes much more robust 3-D indoor positioning performance
compared with single location source.
(30) V. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS OF 3-D-LBMS
In this section, the detailed experiments are presented
to evaluate the performance of proposed PINS and final

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YU et al.: NOVEL 3-D INDOOR LOCALIZATION ALGORITHM BASED ON BLE AND MULTIPLE SENSORS 9367

Fig. 4. Detected QSMF during walking periods.

3-D-LBMS, one standard 3-D building is adopted as the exper-

imental scene. In this work, BLE nodes use TI’s CC2640 chip
which supports the Bluetooth 4.0 protocol, and Google Pixel
3 is used as the tracking device which supports the real-time
BLE scan and contains various MEMS sensors required by
PINS, such as the accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer,
and barometer. The sampling rates of multiple sensors and
BLE nodes are set as 50 and 5 Hz, respectively, and the output
frequency of 3-D-LBMS is calculated as 50 Hz.
Fig. 5. (a) Pedestrian’s walking path at the 16th floor. (b) Pedestrian’s walking
A. Accuracy Evaluation of PINS path at the 15th floor.

The proposed PINS in this work uses the walking speed,

position increment and stable magnetic field provided by
PDR, barometer, and QSMF periods to eliminate the cumu-
lative error in the procedure of INS mechanization-based 3-D
attitude and location update.
QSMF detection is used to recognize the stable mag-
netic field in surrounding environments during the pedestrian’s
walking procedure, the calibrated magnetic data in these peri-
ods can be extracted as the observed vector in AUKF to
eliminate heading drift caused by gyroscope updating. The
detected QSMF periods during walking cycles in a corridor is
shown in Fig. 4.
It can be seen from Fig. 4 that there are several detected
QSMF periods during walking which are marked in red line, Fig. 6. Comparison of different heading estimation algorithms.
and the collected magnetic data during QSMF periods is fused
in AUKF after calibration, which provides a reliable observed
value for gyroscope-based heading update and can effectively It can be found from Fig. 6 that the proposed AUKF
decrease the magnetic disturbance in local environments. maintains high accuracy due to the combination of INS/PDR
In this work, a circular corridor is used as the experimen- mechanizations and QSMF periods and the heading estimation
tal site to evaluate the accuracy of proposed PINS algorithm, error is within 4◦ after a long time use (about 25 min), while
which is shown in Fig. 5. the gyroscope-based heading increases more than 30◦ because
In order to evaluate the long-term accuracy of heading esti- of the cumulative error and the magnetic heading also proves
mation and 2-D localization based on PINS, the tester started large fluctuations under artificial interference contained indoor
at point A, continuously passed by the position B, C, D, and environments.
finally went back to point A, this procedure repeated ten times In the 2-D localization experiment, the magnetic heading-
in order to evaluate long-term performance. In this work, based PDR mechanization would be affected by the artificial
the gyroscope-based heading, the magnetic heading and the interference indoors therefore the trajectory may drift in a short
AUKF-based heading are calculated, respectively, to compare time period. To be fair, the traditional PDR mechanization in
their estimation performance in a long period, the result is this experiment also uses the AUKF-based heading in order
shown in Fig. 6. to evaluate the improvement of AUKF-based walking speed

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9368 IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 8, NO. 11, JUNE 1, 2021

Fig. 9. Reference distribution of BLE-based landmark.

Fig. 7. 2-D localization comparison between PINS and PDR.

Fig. 8. CDF error comparison between PINS and PDR. Fig. 10. DTW comparison result.

estimation. The comparison of 2-D localization performance

between the proposed PINS and traditional PDR is shown in
Fig. 7.
Fig. 7 shows that the PINS-based localization result is more
closer to the reference route compared with traditional PDR,
because the improvement of heading and walking speed esti-
mation in proposed PINS effectively decreases the cumulative
error of 2-D indoor localization compared with the traditional
PDR algorithm, and the CDF error comparison between PINS
and traditional PDR estimated at the test points A, W1 , W2 ,
W3 , during each walking procedure is shown in Fig. 8.

B. Accuracy Estimation of Landmark Detection Fig. 11. Accuracy of BLE-based landmark detection.

The received RSSI will produce signal peak when the

pedestrian walks by a local BLE node. In this article, DTW
algorithm is used to detect the BLE-based landmark, a real-
time RSSI distribution extracted from RSSI map is used to
calculate the similarity with the reference distribution. The
reference distribution can be acquired by fitting the measured
RSSI value at each position in the range of effective distance
of the BLE node by (20), which is shown in Fig. 9.
Fig. 9 indicates the difference between reference RSSI dis-
tribution and real-time collected RSSI distribution. In the
proposed BLE landmark detection algorithm, a time window
of length 15 is used to collect real-time RSSI data from
RSSI map for DTW comparison with the reference distribu-
tion extracted in Fig. 9, which can store received RSSI in
a walking period of 3s. The DTW comparison result between
real-time RSSI data from RSSI map and reference distribution
is shown in Fig. 10.
In Fig. 10, the calculation result of DTW proved the mini-
mum value when the pedestrian reached the position of the
BLE node at the data point 22, and then the DTW value
began to increase. The final accuracy of BLE-based landmark
detection is shown in Fig. 11.

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YU et al.: NOVEL 3-D INDOOR LOCALIZATION ALGORITHM BASED ON BLE AND MULTIPLE SENSORS
Fig. 12. Comparison between PINS and 3-D-LBMS.
TABLE II
ACCURACY C OMPARISON B ETWEEN PINS AND 3-D-LBMS
Fig. 11 demonstrates the precision of proposed BLE land-
mark detection algorithm, the average detection error is within
0.42 m, and the maximum detection error is not greater than
0.75 m. The 3-D location information provided by the detected
BLE landmarks is further integrated with multiple sensors-
based method in proposed AUKF to realize a robust and
concrete multisource-based 3-D indoor localization.
C. Accuracy Evaluation of 3-D-LBMS
To evaluate the performance of proposed 3-D-LBMS, one
typical 3-D scene was selected as the experimental environ-
ment, which is shown in Fig. 5. The BLE nodes are deployed
at reference point A to R with an average deployment distance
of 7 m. The deployment of BLE nodes is used to provide
absolute reference to multiple sensors-based method, and the
multisource-based information is finally fused by AUKF to
eliminate the cumulative error of MEMS sensors.
In 2-D long-term accuracy test, the tester started at point D,
passed by the point A, B, and C, then returned to the point
D, also this procedure is repeated ten times. In this experi-
ment, the PINS is evaluated as multiple sensors-based location
source in order to estimate the accuracy improvement of
multisource-based AUKF. The detected BLE-based landmarks
provides an absolute location source which can further elim-
inate the cumulative error caused by multiple sensors-based
positioning method. The performance comparison between
PINS and proposed 3-D-LBMS is shown in Fig. 12.
Fig. 12 illustrates that the proposed 3-D-LBMS effectively
eliminates the cumulative error caused by MEMS sensors-
based positioning method and further improve the long-term
accuracy and robustness of the PINS because of the combina-
tion of both relative and absolute location sources. Table II
compares the 2-D accuracy evaluation results of proposed
3-D-LBMS and PINS at test points A, W1 , W2 , W3 .
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9369
Fig. 13. (a) 2-D results between PINS and 3-D-LBMS. (b) 3-D results
between PINS and 3-D-LBMS.
It can be seen from Table II that the proposed 3-D-LBMS
remains stable and accurate after a long-time use and achieves
the meterlevel 2-D localization accuracy. The average 2-D
localization error is within 0.75 m, and the CDF error is within
0.57 m and 1.12 m in cases of 50% and 90%. Thus, the inte-
gration of BLE-based landmarks significantly improves the
accuracy of multiple sensors-based positioning method in the
typical 2-D indoor environment under magnetic interference.
In order to evaluate the 3-D localization performance of
proposed 3-D-LBMS, two adjacent office floors which con-
tain complex corridors are selected as the experimental site.
The tester started at point D, passed by the point E to R,
then passed the point A, B, and C, finally returned to the
point D, as shown in Fig. 5. In this experiment, the detected
BLE landmarks can constrain the cumulative error of multiple
sensors-based method, especially when the pedestrian moves
between different floors. The 2-D and 3-D results comparison
between PINS and 3-D-LBMS are shown in Fig. 13.
Fig. 13 demonstrates that compared with the 2-D indoor
environment, the 3-D indoor environment proves much higher
positioning error due to the pedestrian‘s motion modes of
going up and down stairs. The 3-D-LBMS combines the
advantages of relative location source of multiple sensors and
the absolute location source of BLE landmarks, which effec-
tively eliminates the cumulative error of MEMS sensors-based
method. The 2-D positioning accuracy is evaluated at the
9370 IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 8, NO. 11, JUNE 1, 2021

AUKF fusion. To eliminate the cumulative error of MEMS

sensors-based positioning method, the INS and PDR mecha-
nizations are combined, the position increment and walking
speed provided by PDR effective constrain the deviation of
INS update. In addition, the QSMF periods are detected dur-
ing the pedestrian’s walking procedure to further eliminate the
heading deviation caused by the artificial interference indoors.
(a) (b) In order to improve the accuracy of BLE-based landmark
detection, the DTW algorithm is applied to decrease the effect
Fig. 14. (a) 2-D positioning accuracy. (b) 3-D altitude accuracy. of RSSI signal fluctuation and uncertainty of RSSI propaga-
tion model, and the 3-D location information of detected BLE
landmarks is finally integrated with PINS by the AUKF to pro-
vide meterlevel localization performance. The final estimated
2-D positioning error is within 1.08 m in case of 75%, and
the altitude calculation error is within 0.46 m in case of 75%.

VI. C ONCLUSION
In order to realize robust multisource fusion-based 3-D
indoor positioning in complex indoor environments, this article
proposes the 3-D-LBMS algorithm that uses the combination
of BLE and multiple sensors-based location sources, and the
Fig. 15. Comparison between FP+PRM and 3-D-LBMS.
contribution of this work contains three main parts.
1) Combination of INS and PDR Mechanizations (PINS):
The walking speed and position increment provided by
reference points A, W1 , C, W3 , W4 , W5 , W6 , W7 , W8 , and the
PDR are used to eliminate the deviation of INS update,
3-D altitude accuracy is evaluated at the reference points G,
and the detected QSMF periods are adopted for further
H, I, N, O, P, respectively. The statistical results of final 2-D
improvement of the heading estimation.
and 3-D altitude accuracy of proposed 3-D-LBMS are shown
2) Application of DTW-Based BLE Landmark Detection
in Fig. 14.
Algorithm: Using DTW algorithm to decrease the effects
It can be seen from Fig. 14 that the meterlevel 2-D indoor
of RSSI signal fluctuation and propagation model in
localization accuracy and the submeter level 3-D altitude esti-
complex indoor environments, and the 3-D location
mation accuracy can be achieved by proposed 3-D-LBMS
information of detected BLE landmarks is extracted and
algorithm. The 2-D localization accuracy of 3-D-LBMS is
fused with multiple sensors-based method.
within 1.08 m in case of 75%. The cumulative error of
3) Integrated Localization Based on AUKF: In order to
barometer-based altitude calculation is also effectively elimi-
achieve accurate and concrete 3-D indoor localization
nated and the accuracy of altitude estimation is within 0.46 m
performance, the results of PINS and detected BLE land-
in case of 75%. Compared with single location source-
marks are fused together, the integration of different
based positioning method, the proposed 3-D-LBMS combines
location sources significantly increase the accuracy and
the advantages of multiple sensors and BLE-based location
stability of final 3-D indoor localization.
sources and significantly improves the long-term accuracy and
The proposed 3-D-LBMS exists some limitations in sev-
stability of multisource fusion-based 3-D indoor localization.
eral cases of real-world applications. First, although a variety
Finally, we give the localization comparison between the
of MEMS sensors are combined for more robust 3-D indoor
FP + PRM algorithm proposed in [24] and the 3-D-LBMS
localization, some kinds of smartphones do not contain the
proposed in this article. The selected walking route is the same
required IMU or barometer, therefore make it difficult to real-
as in Fig. 12 for long-term accuracy, and the points A, B,
ize multisource fusion-based 3-D indoor localization. Second,
C, D are choose as the test points, the comparison result of
this work proposes the DTW-based BLE landmark detection
positioning accuracy is shown in Fig. 15.
algorithm to improve the university and stability in different
Fig. 15 indicates that compared with the FP + PRM
environments, while the accuracy of received RSSI varies from
algorithm, the proposed 3-D-LBMS achieves much better posi-
smartphone to smartphone due the difference of hardware,
tioning performance, which is related to the improvement of
leads to the additional bias in the procedure of using RSSI
the MEMS sensors-based positioning method, BLE landmark
propagation model, which needs to be calibrated. In addition,
detection algorithm, and the final AUKF fusion structure.
the indoor NLOS and multipath propagation can also cause
the signal fluctuation, thus, a more comprehensive propaga-
D. Results of the Overall 3-D-LBMS Algorithm tion model is needed aiming at different indoor environments
This article compared the heading estimation and posi- to improve the performance of GMM. Finally, the limited cov-
tioning results of the PDR mechanization and PINS, the erage of BLE RSSI signal make the localization performance
DTW-based BLE landmark detection algorithm, and the final instable at the long distance, therefore, the deployment of the

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YU et al.: NOVEL 3-D INDOOR LOCALIZATION ALGORITHM BASED ON BLE AND MULTIPLE SENSORS
BLE node will have a significant impact on the positioning
accuracy.
The future work of this article is to further improve the
long-term accuracy of MEMS sensors-based 3-D localization,
and take pedestrian’s motion modes into consideration, such
as going up and down floors in order to limit the effects of
human activities. In addition, a more comprehensive RSSI
propagation model needs to be constructed aiming at differ-
ent application scenes and indoor interference which can still
remain the precision and efficiency of the algorithm at the
same time. To further enhance the robustness and universality
of BLE and multiple sensors-based indoor localization, more
diverse indoor environments will be selected for evaluation,
such as the shopping mall and the airport, and the large-scale
and long-term testing can be conducted toward the daily life
user applications.
With the rapid developments of artificial intelligence (AI)
and IoT fields, the accuracy requirements for indoor position-
ing are getting higher and higher, the emerging BLE-based
technologies, such as Angle of Arrival (AOA) and Angle of
Departure (AOD) are foreseen to provide much more precise
measured information and will also be supported in the sub-
sequent protocol and corresponding chipsets, the smartphone
BLE-based submeter level indoor localization would attract
great attention in the future.
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Yue Yu (Student Member, IEEE) received the B.S.
and M.S. degrees from Chongqing University of
Posts and Telecommunications, Chongqing, China.
He is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in geodesy
and survey engineering with Wuhan University,
Wuhan, China.
His research interests include the inertial position-
ing and navigation technology, indoor positioning
and navigation technology based on chance signal,
signal processing and fusion technology.
Ruizhi Chen received the Ph.D. degree from
the University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland,
in 1991. He is currently a Professor and the
Director of the State Key Laboratory of Information
Engineering in Surveying, Mapping, and Remote
Sensing, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China. He
was an Endowed Chair Professor with Texas
A&M University Corpus Christi, Corpus Christi,
TX, USA, the Head and a Professor with the
Department of Navigation and Positioning, Finnish
Geodetic Institute, Kirkkonummi, Finland, and the
Engineering Manager of Nokia, Espoo, Finland. He has published two books
and more than 200 scientific papers. His current research interests include
indoor positioning, satellite navigation, and location-based services.
Authorized licensed use limited to: University of Exeter. Downloaded on May 30,2021 at 05:01:18 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 8, NO. 11, JUNE 1, 2021
Liang Chen received the Ph.D. degree from
Southeast University, Nanjing, China, in 2009. He is
currently a Professor with the State Key Laboratory
of Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing
Information Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan,
China. He was a Senior Researcher with Finnish
Geodesy Institute, Kirkkonummi, Finland, the
Deputy Head of Sensors and Indoor Navigation
Research Group, a Research Leader in Finnish Laser
Radar National Excellent Innovation Center. His
research interests include navigation based on new
signal theory and method, smartphone ubiquitous positioning and indoor and
outdoor seamless localization and navigation.
Xingyu Zheng received the B.S. and M.S. degrees
in cartography and geographical information system
from the Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing,
China, in 2014 and 2017, respectively. He is cur-
rently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in geodesy and
survey engineering with Wuhan University, Wuhan,
China.
His research interests include indoor position-
ing, ubiquitous computing, machine learning, and
channel state information.
Dewen Wu received the B.S. and M.S. degrees
from Wuhan University, Wuhan, China, in 2014 and
2017, respectively, where he is currently pursuing
the Ph.D. degree in geodesy and survey engineering.
His research interests include visual positioning
and medical imaging processing.
Wei Li received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in sur-
veying and mapping from Beijing University of Civil
Engineering and Architecture, Beijing, China. He is
currently pursuing the D.S. degree in geodesy and
survey engineering with Wuhan University, Wuhan,
China.
His research interests include indoor positioning
and navigation, and sensor fusion.
Yuan Wu received the B.S. degree in computer
science and technology from Southwest University,
Chongqing, China, in 2016, and the M.S. degree in
computer application technology from Institute of
Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing,
China, in 2019. He is currently pursuing the Ph.D.
degree in geodesy and survey engineering with the
State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in
Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, Wuhan
University, Wuhan, China.
His research interests include indoor positioning
and navigation, information fusion, and location-based services.