FieldLight: Device-Free Indoor Human Localization Using Passive Visible Light Positioning and Artificial Potential Fields

Device-free or passive localization techniques allow positioning of targets, without requiring them to carry any form of transceiver or tag. In this paper, a novel device-free visible light positioning technique is proposed. It exploits the variation of the ambient light levels caused by a moving entity. The target is localized by employing a system of artificial potential fields associated with a set of photodiodes embedded into an indoor environment. The system does not require the existing lighting infrastructure to be modified. It also employs a novel calibration procedure that does not require labelled training data, thus significantly reducing the calibration cost. The developed prototype system is installed in three typical indoor environments consisting of a corridor, foyer, and laboratory and was able to attain median errors of 0.68m, 1.20m and 0.84m respectively. Through experimental results, the proposed VLP technique is benchmarked against an existing wireless RSSI-based device-free localization approach, and was able to attain a median error 0.63m lower than the wireless technique.