Publication of the week: H.S. Maghdid & I.A. Lami

H.S Maghdid, I.A. Lami, K.Z Ghafoor & J. Lloret, “Seamless Outdoors-Indoors Localization Solutions on Smartphones: Implementation and Challenges”, ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR) 48.4 (May 2016), article 53; doi: 10.1145/2871166

The demand for more sophisticated Location-Based Services (LBS) in terms of applications variety and accuracy is tripling every year since the emergence of the smartphone a few years ago. Equally, smartphone manufacturers are mounting several wireless communication and localisation technologies, inertial sensors as well as powerful processing capability, to cater to such LBS applications. A hybrid of wireless technologies is needed to provide seamless localisation solutions and to improve accuracy, to reduce time to fix, and to reduce power consumption. The review of localisation techniques / technologies of this emerging field is therefore important. This article reviews the recent research-oriented and commercial localisation solutions on smartphones. The focus of this article is on the implementation challenges associated with utilising these positioning solutions on Android-based smartphones. Furthermore, the taxonomy of smartphone-location techniques is highlighted with a special focus on the detail of each technique and its hybridisation. The article compares the indoor localisation techniques based on accuracy, utilised wireless technology, overhead, and localisation technique used. The pursuit of achieving ubiquitous localisation outdoors and indoors for critical LBS applications such as security and safety will dominate future research efforts.

The full article is available from the ACM Digital Library.

Dr Ihsan Lami is Reader in Computer Sciences at Buckingham. Halgurd Maghdid has just completed his DPhil in the Department of Applied Computing, working on “Hybridization of GPS and Wireless Technologies to Offer Seamless Outdoor / Indoor Positioning for LBS Applications”.