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Characterisations and recommendations for an angle-of-arrival-based optical wireless positioning system

University of British Columbia

The rise of Optical Wireless (OW) technologies in recent years has motivated the development of many applications. While OW communication (e.g., Li-Fi, free-space optical) is the primary area of interest, OW positioning with an array of indoor optical beacons and a mobile optical receiver has begun to gain traction. Optical wireless positioning has the potential to complement GPS in indoor environments, such as buildings, where GPS is unreliable. There are several methods of OW positioning that are capable of metre to centimetre level accuracy. This thesis investigates an angle-of-arrival- (AOA-) based OW positioning system which we find capable of centimetre level position accuracy. In the past, OW positioning system analyses tended to focus on optical receiver design without considering the optical beacon geometry. Unfortunately, position accuracy of an OW positioning system greatly depends on both. As such, the AOA-based OW positioning system analysis presented in this thesis is broken into two areas: optical beacon geometry and optical receiver design. Optical beacon geometry is investigated to first quantify the performance of generalized optical beacon geometries using a dilution-of-precision (DOP) analysis, then to investigate several optical beacon geometries and identify trends to improve DOP. Optical receiver design is then carried out by first using the literature to identify a potential optical receiver architecture, then thoroughly investigating the design of that architecture to minimize measurement errors. Using the analysis results for both the optical beacon geometry and the optical receiver, an AOA-based OW positioning system is built. Theoretical and experimental position error results over a 1 m² working area are 1.68 cm and 1.7 cm ± 0.2 cm, respectively. The characterisations and recommendations in this thesis support improved AOA-based OW positioning system designs in the future.

Text

2016-11-02

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/59596

Electrical Engineering

University of British Columbia

UBCO

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/