SDR based indoor beacon localization using 3d probabilistic multipath exploitation and deep learning

Wireless indoor positioning systems (IPS) are ever-growing as traditional global positioning systems (GPS) are ineffective due to non-line-of-sight (NLoS) signal propagation. In this paper, we present a novel approach to learning three-dimensional (3D) multipath channel characteristics in a probabilistic manner for providing high performance indoor localization of wireless beacons. The proposed system employs a single triad dipole vector sensor (TDVS) for polarization diversity, a deep learning model deemed the denoising autoencoder to extract unique fingerprints from 3D multipath channel information, and a probabilistic k-nearest-neighbor (PkNN) to exploit the 3D multipath characteristics. The proposed system is the first to exploit 3D multipath channel characteristics for indoor wireless beacon localization via vector sensing methodologies, a software defined radio (SDR) platform, and multipath channel estimation.