Experimental study on the effects of groups of people on magnetoquasistatic positioning accuracy

Position and orientation measurements have been demonstrated, recently, using low-frequency magnetoquasistatic fields and complex image theory for distances up to 50 m [1]. The key motivation for using magnetoquasistatic fields is to enable accurate estimation of an object´s position and orientation when near weakly conducting dielectric obstacles, e.g., groups of people. An example application is tracking an American football during game-play [1]. In this paper, we present measurements using the magnetoquasistatic technique to show that the presence of a large group of 25 people introduces a peak distance error of less than 4.5 cm for an emitter-receiver distance of 10 m.