A Comprehensive Analysis of Magnetic Field Based Indoor Positioning With Smartphones: Opportunities, Challenges and Practical Limitations

The use of the magnetic field data to perform indoor positioning gained an accelerating interest during the last few years. The ubiquity of the magnetic field data makes it a potential candidate for indoor positioning and localization. Additionally, the availability of the embedded magnetic sensor in the smartphones makes it an infrastructure-less approach that requires no additional infrastructure to perform positioning. Despite that, the magnetic field-based positioning is relatively new than those of Wi-Fi, radio frequency identification, and ultra-wideband based approaches and faces many challenges and necessitates a comprehensive investigation of the associated problems for wide applicability. For example, smartphone heterogeneity, mutation of the magnetic field data due to change in the user’s height, time, and device, and low discernibility are a few of the problems that require substantial investigation before the practical deployment of the magnetic field data for indoor positioning and localization. This study contributes by endeavoring a comprehensive analysis of the opportunities and challenges of using the magnetic field data for indoor positioning and localization using smartphones. The pros and cons of the magnetic field data are highlighted through the experiments conducted in various indoor environments using multiple smartphones. The research thus helps in understanding the practical considerations for deploying the magnetic field data for indoor positioning and localization.