How accurate is the Marvelmind indoor positioning system in noisy environments?

Can Marvelmind RTLS be accurate in noisy environments, for example, a factory floor or a concert? – Clearly, yes.

Near the mobile beacon? – Use NIA or MF NIA – mobile beacons emit ultrasound and don’t care about the noise. Fly noisy drones
Near the stationary beacons? – use IA – the stationary beacons emit ultrasound and don’t care about the noise

Typically, noise levels differ near mobile and stationary beacons.

It is all about signal/noise ratio – not about the noise level
Thus, if you have a very noisy environment, you can place stationary beacons denser and closer to the mobile beacons, thus drastically increasing the signal-to-noise ratio
Or you can try to be farther from the sources of noise, thus decreasing the noise and once again increasing the signal-to-noise ratio

Remember that, though, we are an acoustic-based and ultrasound time-of-flight based system, we operate in ultrasound, after all. Thus, something very loud in the audible spectrum can be relatively quiet in the ultrasound and vice versa – something rather quiet in the audible spectrum can have very high ultrasound noise. The latter is rare but not impossible
Typical bad noise: something wideband and loud – strong air conditioners, air pumps, drilling or milling and similar. Strong rain over metal – droplets produce the acoustically close to our ultrasound pulses noise
Loud music or voice – mild or no impact
Short bursts like gun shots – can be extremely strong but they are very short and to interfere they must badly coincide with our timing, which is unlikely
Unexpected and nasty can be motors, AC-DC or DC-DC converters, some lamps. They can have high ultrasound noise with modest acoustic noise or no noise at all. These are rare but not impossible. Quite often, you can easily fight them by properly choosing ultrasound frequencies used in the affected areas

We offer different architectures for different cases: drones – NIA or MF NIA. In some cases, IA, if you use deflectors or distances are small. People – IA. Robots and forklifts – typically, IA, but NIA and MF NIA is fine as well. Other requirements may affect more on the architecture selection
Very sharp digital filters. As discussed above, it is not about the noise level but about the signal to noise ratio. Our sharp digital filters pass our narrow-band signal and cut off wideband noise
Noise density drops very quickly with the frequency. Thus, loud music or speech is typically not a problem
You can use higher ultrasound frequencies, if your environment is noise-nasty. Higher frequency bands are quieter in ultrasound
You can even use special deflectors in special cases: Indoor positioning system for drone shows and swarms
Optimal placement increases the signal-to-noise ratio. Direct the beacons to the right using Magnetic Holders, for example

All details and videos: Fast and low-latency IPS / RTLS with Ultrasound + IMU sensor fusion
Layered tracking: the ultrasound tracking stays as the base, and on top of it, the ultrasound and IMU data are fused into 80 Hz location data with 12-20 ms latency
More tolerant to noise and jumps: the tracking is cleaner and more coherent even in not-so-good conditions and with partial or temporary obstructions
Golden data: the RHU processes all layers and chooses the best data with the highest confidence – you get both the very fast IMU data and, about 200-300 ms later, even more verified golden data