title: Ultra Wideband Indoor Positioning Technologies: Analysis and Recent Advances.
abstract: In recent years, indoor positioning has emerged as a critical function in many end-user applications; including military, civilian, disaster relief and peacekeeping missions. In comparison with outdoor environments, sensing location information in indoor environments requires a higher precision and is a more challenging task in part because various objects reflect and disperse signals. Ultra WideBand (UWB) is an emerging technology in the field of indoor positioning that has shown better performance compared to others. In order to set the stage for this work, we provide a survey of the state-of-the-art technologies in indoor positioning, followed by a detailed comparative analysis of UWB positioning technologies. We also provide an analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) to analyze the present state of UWB positioning technologies. While SWOT is not a quantitative approach, it helps in assessing the real status and in revealing the potential of UWB positioning to effectively address the indoor positioning problem. Unlike previous studies, this paper presents new taxonomies, reviews some major recent advances, and argues for further exploration by the research community of this challenging problem space.
authors.affiliation: Computer Research Institute, King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, Riyadh 11442, Saudi Arabia. aarifi@kacst.edu.sa.
authors.forename: Abdulrahman
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Alarifi
authors.affiliation: Computer Science Department, King Saud University, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia. salman@ksu.edu.sa.
authors.forename: AbdulMalik
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Al-Salman
authors.affiliation: Computer Research Institute, King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, Riyadh 11442, Saudi Arabia. maalsaleh@kacst.edu.sa.
authors.forename: Mansour
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Alsaleh
authors.affiliation: Computer Research Institute, King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, Riyadh 11442, Saudi Arabia. aalnafessah@kacst.edu.sa.
authors.forename: Ahmad
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Alnafessah
authors.affiliation: Computer Science Department, King Saud University, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia. 430204094@student.ksu.edu.sa.
authors.forename: Suheer
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Al-Hadhrami
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, Al-Imam Mohammad bin Saud Islamic University, Riyadh 11432, Saudi Arabia. mai.alammar@ccis.imamu.edu.sa.
authors.forename: Mai A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Al-Ammar
authors.affiliation: Information Technology Department, King Saud University, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia. hendk@ksu.edu.sa.
authors.forename: Hend S
authors.initials: HS
authors.lastname: Al-Khalifa
keywords: SWOT; UWB; Ultra Wideband; indoor positioning; localization; positioning; wearable computing; wireless sensor networks