11th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems: Computing, Networking and Services

Research Article

SBC: Scalable Smartphone Barometer Calibration through Crowdsourcing

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  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.4108/icst.mobiquitous.2014.257822,
        author={Ye Haibo and Xianping Tao and Jian Lu and Tao Gu},
        title={SBC: Scalable Smartphone Barometer Calibration through Crowdsourcing},
        proceedings={11th International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems: Computing, Networking and Services},
        publisher={ICST},
        proceedings_a={MOBIQUITOUS},
        year={2014},
        month={11},
        keywords={smartphone barometer calibration crowdsourcing},
        doi={10.4108/icst.mobiquitous.2014.257822}
    }
    
  • Ye Haibo
    Xianping Tao
    Jian Lu
    Tao Gu
    Year: 2014
    SBC: Scalable Smartphone Barometer Calibration through Crowdsourcing
    MOBIQUITOUS
    ICST
    DOI: 10.4108/icst.mobiquitous.2014.257822
Ye Haibo1,*, Xianping Tao1, Jian Lu1, Tao Gu2
  • 1: State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University, China
  • 2: School of Computer Science and IT, RMIT University, Australia
*Contact email: yehb.ye@gmail.com

Abstract

We have seen increasingly popularity in embedding barometer into smartphone today. A barometer measures the barometric pressure, and it can be used for a variety of applications. For example, in localization techniques, it is used to detect the altitude or altitude change of a user. Unfortunately, the smartphone barometer measurement is not accurate, and it has to calibrate appropriately before use. In this paper, we present Scalable Barometer Calibration (SBC), a scalable, transitive calibration algorithm to automatically calibrate barometer for a large number of smartphone users. SBC requires neither any infrastructure nor any human intervention, it uses smartphone barometer and accelerometer only. SBC provides high accuracy of barometer calibration and minimum energy consumption, making it more realistic for real-world deployment. Our simulation and prototype system demonstrate the performance, scalability, and robustness of SBC.