From Wireless Positioning to Mobile Positioning: An Overview of Recent Advances

Recent advances in sensing and computing technologies have inspired a new generation of mobile positioning systems. Compared with traditional wireless positioning systems, the newly emerged systems are characterized by the integration of mobility measurement into positioning. For a given mobile user, its mobility can be measured with two types of sensors: motion sensors and image sensors. Correspondingly, two types of positioning systems have been developed: movement-based positioning systems and vision-based positioning systems. This paper provides an overview of these two types of systems. For each category, we first introduce the underlying principle; then, we present a comparison of some representative systems in terms of the infrastructure and performance; finally, we analyze the major problems encountered in the system design and outline some future research directions.