Implementation and performance analysis of the PDR/GNSS integration on a smartphone

Pedestrian dead reckoning (PDR) is an effective technology for pedestrian navigation. In PDR, the steps are detected with the measurements of self-contained sensors, such as accelerometers, and the position is updated with additional heading angles. A smartphone is usually equipped with a low-cost microelectromechanical system accelerometer, which can be utilized to implement PDR for pedestrian navigation. Since the PDR position errors diverge with the walking distance, the global navigation satellite system (GNSS) is usually integrated with PDR for more reliable position results. This paper implemented a smartphone PDR/GNSS via a Kalman filter and factor graph optimization (FGO). In the FGO, the PDR factor is modeled, and the states are correlated with a dead reckoning algorithm. The GNSS position is modeled as the “GNSS” factor to constrain the states at each step. With a graphic model representing the states and measurements, the state estimation is converted to a nonlinear least square problem, and we utilize the Georgia Tech Smoothing and Mapping graph optimization library to implement the optimization. We tested the proposed method on a Huawei Mate 40 Pro handset with a standard playground field test, and the field test results showed that the FGO effectively improved the smartphone position accuracy. We have released the source codes and hope that they will inspire other works on pedestrian navigation, i.e., constructing an adaptive multi-sensor integration system using FGO on a smartphone.