Article

PinPoint: An Asynchronous Time-Based Location Determination System

Authors:

Moustafa Youssef,

Ashok AgrawalaAuthors Info & Claims

MobiSys '06: Proceedings of the 4th international conference on Mobile systems, applications and services

Pages 165 - 176

https://doi.org/10.1145/1134680.1134698

Published: 19 June 2006 Publication History

Abstract

This paper presents the design, implementation and evaluation of the PinPoint location determination system. PinPoint is a distributed algorithm that enables a set of $n$ nodes to determine the RF propagation delays between every pair of nodes, from which the inter-node distances and hence the spatial topology can be readily determined. PinPoint does not require any calibration of the area of interest and thus is rapidly deployable. Unlike existing time-of-arrival techniques, PinPoint does not require an infrastructure of accurate clocks (e.g., GPS) nor does it incur the o(n²) message exchanges of "echoing" techniques. PinPoint can work with nodes having inexpensive crystal oscillator clocks, and incurs a constant number of message exchanges per node to determine the location of $n$ nodes. Each node's clock is assumed to run reliably but asynchronously with respect to the other nodes, i.e., they can run at slightly different rates because of hardware (oscillator) inaccuracies. PinPoint provides a mathematical way to compensate for these clock differences in order to arrive at a very precise timestamp recovery that in turn leads to a precise distance determination. Moreover, each node is able to determine the clock characteristics of other nodes in its neighborhood allowing network synchronization. We present a prototype implementation for PinPoint and discusses the practical issues in implementing the mathematical framework and how PinPoint handles the different sources of error affecting its accuracy. Evaluation of the prototype in typical indoor and outdoor environments shows that PinPoint gives an average accuracy of four to six feet, in different environments, allowing PinPoint to support accurate rapidly deployable localization scenarios.

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Cited By

Zhang GZhao PZhang AZhang GZhao PZhang A(2024)P$${ }^3$$-LOC: A Privacy-Preserving Paradigm-Driven Framework for Indoor LocalizationPrivacy Preservation in Distributed Systems10.1007/978-3-031-58013-0_6(121-149)Online publication date: 8-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-58013-0_6
Stefanski JSadowski J(2023)Asynchronous Method of Simultaneous Object Position and Orientation Estimation with Two TransmittersNAVIGATION: Journal of the Institute of Navigation10.33012/navi.60170:4(navi.601)Online publication date: 21-Jun-2023
https://doi.org/10.33012/navi.601
Li CHuang QZhou YHuang YHu QChen HZhang QEskicioglu RHuang PPatwari N(2023)RIScan: RIS-aided Multi-user Indoor Localization Using COTS Wi-FiProceedings of the 21st ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems10.1145/3625687.3625806(445-458)Online publication date: 12-Nov-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3625687.3625806
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Index Terms

PinPoint: An Asynchronous Time-Based Location Determination System
1. Computer systems organization
  1. Embedded and cyber-physical systems
  2. Real-time systems

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

MobiSys '06: Proceedings of the 4th international conference on Mobile systems, applications and services

June 2006

268 pages

ISBN:1595931953

DOI:10.1145/1134680

General Chairs:
Per Gunningberg
Uppsala University, Sweden
,
Lars-Åke Larzon
Uppsala University, Sweden
,
Program Chairs:
Mahadev Satyanarayanan
Carnegie Mellon University, USA
,
Nigel Davies
Lancaster University, UK

Copyright © 2006 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 19 June 2006

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MobiSys06: The 4th International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services 2006

June 19 - 22, 2006

Uppsala, Sweden

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Overall Acceptance Rate 274 of 1,679 submissions, 16%

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Cited By

Zhang GZhao PZhang AZhang GZhao PZhang A(2024)P$${ }^3$$-LOC: A Privacy-Preserving Paradigm-Driven Framework for Indoor LocalizationPrivacy Preservation in Distributed Systems10.1007/978-3-031-58013-0_6(121-149)Online publication date: 8-Apr-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-58013-0_6
Stefanski JSadowski J(2023)Asynchronous Method of Simultaneous Object Position and Orientation Estimation with Two TransmittersNAVIGATION: Journal of the Institute of Navigation10.33012/navi.60170:4(navi.601)Online publication date: 21-Jun-2023
https://doi.org/10.33012/navi.601
Li CHuang QZhou YHuang YHu QChen HZhang QEskicioglu RHuang PPatwari N(2023)RIScan: RIS-aided Multi-user Indoor Localization Using COTS Wi-FiProceedings of the 21st ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems10.1145/3625687.3625806(445-458)Online publication date: 12-Nov-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3625687.3625806
Uchytil CStorti D(2023)A Function-Based Approach to Interactive High-Precision Volumetric Design and FabricationACM Transactions on Graphics10.1145/362293443:1(1-15)Online publication date: 29-Sep-2023
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Wang WHuang ZGao Z(2023)Intelligent Positioning Algorithm Based on CSI Channel ModeInternational Journal of Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence10.1142/S021800142359006137:04Online publication date: 11-Mar-2023
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Zhang TZhang DYang SSun QChen Y(2023)WiCo: Robust Indoor Localization via Spectrum Confidence Estimation2023 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC)10.1109/WCNC55385.2023.10118725(1-6)Online publication date: Mar-2023
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Yang SZhang DSong RYin PChen Y(2023)Multiple WiFi Access Points Co-Localization Through Joint AoA EstimationIEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing10.1109/TMC.2023.3239377(1-16)Online publication date: 2023
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Akand MSafavi-Naini RKneppers MGiraud MLafourcade P(2023)Privacy-Preserving Proof-of-Location With Security Against Geo-TamperingIEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing10.1109/TDSC.2021.312807320:1(131-146)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2023
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