Detecting Positioning Errors and Estimating Correct Positions by Moving Window

PLoS One. 2015 Dec 1;10(12):e0143618. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0143618. eCollection 2015.

Abstract

In recent times, improvements in smart mobile devices have led to new functionalities related to their embedded positioning abilities. Many related applications that use positioning data have been introduced and are widely being used. However, the positioning data acquired by such devices are prone to erroneous values caused by environmental factors. In this research, a detection algorithm is implemented to detect erroneous data over a continuous positioning data set with several options. Our algorithm is based on a moving window for speed values derived by consecutive positioning data. Both the moving average of the speed and standard deviation in a moving window compose a moving significant interval at a given time, which is utilized to detect erroneous positioning data along with other parameters by checking the newly obtained speed value. In order to fulfill the designated operation, we need to examine the physical parameters and also determine the parameters for the moving windows. Along with the detection of erroneous speed data, estimations of correct positioning are presented. The proposed algorithm first estimates the speed, and then the correct positions. In addition, it removes the effect of errors on the moving window statistics in order to maintain accuracy. Experimental verifications based on our algorithm are presented in various ways. We hope that our approach can help other researchers with regard to positioning applications and human mobility research.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Environment
  • Geographic Information Systems*
  • Smartphone

Grants and funding

This work was supported by NRF-2012R1A2A2A03046473, National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MEST) (http://www.nrf.re.kr/nrf_eng_cms/, HYS). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.