Overview

Communication systems have become an essential part of our daily life. Many devices are nowadays equipped with a GPS receiver to enable location aware services, but in indoor environments this technology fails due to severe multipath, and one needs to resort to alternative methods. The achievement of accurate, reliable and low cost indoor localization systems is still an open problem in which we are working. We are interested in several topics related to wireless indoor localization of a target node, such as the estimation of the time of arrival (TOA) of the signals exchanged between the nodes of a wireless network, or the estimation of the position of a target node from noisy range measurements.

Ultra Wideband (UWB) is an emerging technology especially suited for indoor localization applications due to its ranging and obstacle penetration capabilities and its potential for low power and low cost devices. We are paying special attention to this technology, including not only research on localization techniques for UWB systems but also contributions to the design of UWB receivers for low data rate low cost sensor networks.

The work on UWB is included in a wider research line on communication receiver design, where we have focused especially on synchronization. This function consists in the estimation of reference parameters indispensable for the recovery of data, such as carrier synchronization, phase or time of arrival of pulse peaks. An adequate design of the synchronization function is critical in communication systems since it consumes an important amount of the computational resources.

Localization and communication are examples of situations where estimation of certain spatial fields is frequently necessary. Some cases are the received signal strength (RSS) or the non line of sight (NLOS) bias in localization, or RSS in spectrum sensing. The estimation of the spatial fields can be obtained by means of measurement campaigns, but they are expensive and need to be repeated in the common case of changes in the fields (due to changes of the environment, of interferers, etc). A promising alternative is provided by a recent trend we are investigating: crowdsourcing, which consists in exploiting the measurements collected by the wireless transceivers carried by users of the system, navigating the area where the spatial field is required. One situation where crowdsourcing is appropriate is in the presence of a large number of smartphones in public buildings, malls, etc. Another scenario that enables crowdsourcing and can greatly benefit from it is the Internet of Things (IoT). The crowdsourcing paradigm can be applied to different wireless technologies and types of measurements.

Involved Members

Juan J. Murillo Fuentes, Eva Arias de Reyna Domínguez, Rafael Boloix Tortosa and Irene Santos Velázquez.

Publications

Journals

  • I. Santos, J.J. Murillo-Fuentes, P. M. Djuric. (2019). Recursive Estimation of Dynamic RSS Fields Based on Crowdsourcing and Gaussian Processes. IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing. 2019. EEE (2017) Q1, 32/260. DOI 10.1109/TSP.2018.2889987, https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.02530.
  • Eva Arias-de-Reyna, Pau Closas, Davide Dardari, Petar M. Djuric (2018). “Crowd-based Learning of Spatial Fields for the IoT: from Harvesting of Data to Inference.” IEEE Signal Processing Magazine. Special Issue on Signal Processing and the Internet-of-Things, vol. 35, num.5. pp 130-139. September 2018, DOI 10.1109/Msp.2018.2840156
  • Eva Arias-de-Reyna, Juan José Murillo-Fuentes, Rafael Boloix-Tortosa, (2015). “Blind Low Complexity Time-Of-Arrival Estimation Algorithm for UWB Signals”. IEEE Signal Processing Letters, vol. 22, no. 11, pp. 2019-2023, November 2015.
  • Eva Arias-de-Reyna, Petar M. Djurić, (2013). “Indoor localization with range-based measurements and little prior information”. IEEE sensors journal, vol. 13, no. 5, pp. 1979-1987, May 2013.
  • Eva Arias-de-Reyna, (2013). “A Cooperative Localization Algorithm for UWB Indoor Sensor Networks”. Wireless Personal Communications, vol. 72, no. 1, pp. 85-99, 2013.
  • Eva Arias-de-Reyna, Umberto Mengali, (2013). “A Maximum Likelihood UWB localization algorithm exploiting knowledge of the service area layout”. Wireless Personal Communications, vol. 69, no. 4, pp. 1413-1426, 2013.
  • Eva Arias-de-Reyna, José Ignacio Acha-Catalina, (2009). “Blind and Efficient Serial Search Strategy for Ultra Wideband Signal Initial Acquisition”. IEEE transactions on vehicular technology, vol. 58, no. 6, pp. 3053-3057, July 2009.
  • Eva Arias-de-Reyna, José Ignacio Acha-Catalina, (2007). “Coarse Synchronization of Uwb Signals in the Dense Multipath Channel Based on the Golden Section”. Journal of the Franklin Institute, vol. 344, no. 2, pp. 128-151, 2007.
  • Antonio A. D’Amico, Umberto Mengali, Eva Arias-de-Reyna, (2007). “Energy-Detection Uwb Receivers With Multiple Energy Measurements”, vol. 6, no. 7, pp. 2652-2659, July 2007.
  • Eva Arias-de-Reyna, José Ignacio Acha-Catalina, (2005). “Non-Data-Aided and Non-Timing-Directed Feedforward Frequency Acquisition for Linear Digital Modulations”. IEEE transactions on consumer electronics, vol. 51, no. 2, pp. 438-441 , May 2005.
  • Eva Arias-de-Reyna, José Ignacio Acha-Catalina, (2003). “A New Method for Designing Efficient Linear Phase Recursive Filters”. Digital signal processing, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 1-17, 2004.

Conferences

  • E. Arias-de-Reyna , D. Dardari, P. Closas, P. M. Djurić, (2018). “Estimation of Spatial Fields of NLOS/LOS Conditions for Improved Localization in Indoor Environments”, IEEE Statistical Signal Processing Workshop (SSP). Freiburg (Germany), 2018.
  • I. Santos, J.J. Murillo-Fuentes and P.M. Djurić, (2017). “Recursive Estimation of Time-Varying RSS Fields Based on Crowdsourcing and Gaussian Processes”, IEEE International Workshop on Computational Advances in Multi-Sensor Adaptive Processing (CAMSAP). Curaçao (Dutch Antilles), 2017.
  • Irene Santos and Petar M. Djurić, (2017). “Crowdsource-based signal strength field estimation by Gaussian processes”,  25th European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO). Pp. 1215-1219.  Kos (Greece), 2017.
  • Eva Arias-de-Reyna , Davide Dardari, Pau Closas, Petar M. Djurić, (2017). “Enhanced Indoor Localization through Crowd Sensing”, IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP). New Orleans, LA (USA), 2017.
  • Eva Arias-de-Reyna, Umberto Mengali, (2009). “Mapping Techniques for Uwb Positioning”. IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC). Dresden (Germany), 2009.
  • Eva Arias-de-Reyna, José Ignacio Acha-Catalina, (2006). “Efficient Search Strategy for Coarse Synchronization of Uwb Signals Without Channel Knowledge”. IEEE International Conference on Ultra Wideband (ICUWB). Pp 7-12. Waltham, MA (USA), 2006.
  • Eva Arias-de-Reyna, José Ignacio Acha-Catalina, (2006). “Practical Search Strategy for Ultra Wideband Signal Acquisition in the Dense Multipath Channel”. Mediterranean Electrotechnical Conference (MELECON). Benalmádena (Spain), 2006 .
  • Eva Arias-de-Reyna, Antonio A. D’Amico, , Umberto Mengali, (2006). “UWB Energy Detection Receivers With Partial Channel Knowledge”. IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC). Pp 4688. 4693. Istanbul (Turkey), 2006.
  • Eva Arias-de-Reyna, José Ignacio Acha-Catalina, (2005). “Synchronization of Uwb Signals in the Dense Multipath Channel Based on the Golden Section”. IEEE International Conference on Ultra-Wideband (ICUWB). Pp 474-479. Zurich (Switzerland), 2005.
  •  Eva Arias-de-Reyna, José Ignacio Acha-Catalina, (2004). “Non-Data-Aided and Non-Timing-Directed Feedforward Frequency Acquisition for Linear Digital Modulations”. IEEE International Symposium on Consumer Electronics (ISCE). Pp 247-250. Reading (United Kingdom), 2004.
  • Eva Arias-de-Reyna, José Ignacio Acha-Catalina, Jesús Biscarri-Triviño (2002). ” Adaptive Line Enhancement of Complex Sinusoids in Noise With Multirate Techniques”. Iasted Int. Conference on Signal processing, pattern recognition, and applications (SPPRA). Pp 299-303 . Rhodes (Greece), 2003.
  • Eva Arias-de-Reyna, José Ignacio Acha-Catalina, (2003). “Un Nuevo Método de Estimación de la Frecuencia de una Sinusoide Compleja Inmersa en Ruido”. Simposium Nacional de la Unión Científica Internacional de Radio (URSI). A Coruña (Spain), 2003.
  • Eva Arias-de-Reyna, José Ignacio Acha-Catalina, (2002). “Sincronización de la Portadora en Transmisiones en Ráfagas con Modulación QPSK”. Simposium Nacional de la Union Cientifica Internacional de Radio (URSI).  Alcalá de Henares (Spain), 2002.
  • Eva Arias-de-Reyna, José Ignacio Acha-Catalina, (2002). “Non-Data Aided Carrier Synchronization in Burst Mode QPSK Transmission”. Iasted Int. Conference on Communication Systems and Networks (CSN). Pp 288-292 . Benalmádena (Spain), 2002.
  • Eva Arias-de-Reyna, Rubén Martín-Clemente, (2002). “Caracterización Experimental de un Algoritmo de Separación Ciega de Fuentes Basado en Ecuaciones Lineales”. Simposium Nacional de la Union Cientifica Internacional de Radio (URSI).  Alcalá de Henares (Spain), 2002.
  • Eva Arias-de-Reyna, José Ignacio Acha-Catalina, (2002). “Diseño de Filtros IIR con Fase Lineal para Entradas de Longitud Infinita”. Simposium Nacional de la Union Cientifica Internacional de Radio (URSI).  Alcalá de Henares (Spain), 2002.

Acknowledgements

These results were possible thanks to public fundings. The Universidad de Sevilla trusted us to carry out this research. The Spanish Government and the European Union (FEDER) founded this research through the projects MEC.CICYT. 1FD97-0691, TIC 2003-03781, TEC2006-13514-C02-2/TCM, CONSOLIDER CSD2008-00010, TEC2009-14504-C02-02, TEC2012-38800-C03-C02 and TEC2016-78434-C3-2-R. Junta de Andalucía also founded this research under TIC-155. This work was also possible thanks to the fruitful collaboration with Profs. José Ignacio Acha (Universidad de Sevilla), Umberto Mengali (University of Pisa, Italy), Petar M. Djurić (Stony Brook University, New York, USA), Antonio A. D’Amico (University of Pisa, Italy), Davide Dardari (University of Bologna, Italy) and Pau Closas (Northeastern University, Boston, USA).

     USfeder