DOI
https://doi.org/10.25772/JFZQ-8996
Defense Date
2017
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science
Department
Engineering
First Advisor
Ruixin Niu
Second Advisor
Wei Cheng
Abstract
ACCURATE ACOUSTIC RANGING SYSTEM USING ANDROID SMARTPHONES
By Mohammadbagher Fotouhi, Master of Science
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science at Virginia Commonwealth University
Virginia Commonwealth University 2017
Major Director: Dr. Ruixin Niu, Associate Professor of Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
In this thesis, we present the design, implementation, and evaluation of an android ranging system, a high-accuracy acoustic-based ranging system which allows two android mobile phones to learn their physical distance from each other.
In this system we propose a practical solution for accurate ranging based on acoustic communication between speakers and microphones on two smartphones. Using the audible-band acoustic signal with the Wi-Fi assistance without the sound disturbance is promising for large deployment. Our method is a pure software-based solution and uses only the most basic set of commodity hardware: a speaker, a microphone, and Wi-Fi communication. So it is readily applicable to many commercial-off-the-shelf mobile devices like cell phones.
Our system is the result of several design goals, including user privacy, decentralized administration, and low cost. Rather than relying on any centralized management which tracks the user’s location to help them find their distance, our system helps devices learn their distance from each other without advertising their location information with any centralized management.
Compared to alternatives that require special-purpose hardware or pre-existence of precision location infrastructure , our system is applicable on most of off-the-shelf components so it is a commodity-based solution will obviously have wider applications and is cost effective.
Currently, two smartphones are used to estimate the distance between them through Wi-Fi and audio communications. The basic idea is estimating the distance between two phones by estimating the traveling time of audio signal from one phone to the other as the speed of sound is known. The preliminary results of ranging demonstrate that our algorithm could achieve high accuracy, and stable and reliable results for real time smartphone-based indoor ranging.
Rights
© The Author
Is Part Of
VCU University Archives
Is Part Of
VCU Theses and Dissertations
Date of Submission
8-14-2017