ATP: Acoustic Tracking and Positioning under Multipath and Doppler Effect

Abstract

Acoustic tracking and positioning technologies using microphones and speakers have gained significant interest for applications like virtual reality, augmented reality, and IoT devices. However, existing methods still face challenges in real-world deployment due to multipath interference, Doppler frequency shift, and sampling frequency offset between devices. We propose a versatile Acoustic Tracking and Positioning (ATP) method to address these challenges. First, we propose an iterative sampling frequency offset calibration method. Next, we propose a Doppler frequency shift estimation and compensation model. Finally, we propose a fast adaptive algorithm to reconstruct the line-of-sight (LOS) signal under multipath1. We implement ATP in Android and PC and compare it with eight different methods. Evaluation results show that ATP achieves mean accuracy of 0.66 cm, 0.56 cm, and 1.0 cm in tracking, ranging, and positioning tasks. It is 2×, 6×, and 5.8× better than the state-of-the-art methods. ATP advances acoustic sensing for practical applications by providing a robust solution for real-world environments.