We propose modeling an angle-of-arrival (AOA) positioning measurement as a von Mises-Fisher (VMF) distributed unit vector instead of the conventional normally distributed azimuth and elevation measurements. Describing the 2-dimensional AOA measurement with three numbers removes discontinuities and reduces nonlinearity at the poles of the azimuth-elevation coordinate system. Our computer simulations show that the proposed VMF measurement noise model based filters outperform the normal distribution based algorithms in accuracy in a scenario where close-to-pole measurements occur frequently.
@article{arxiv.1709.02437,
title = {3D angle-of-arrival positioning using von Mises-Fisher distribution},
author = {Henri Nurminen and Laura Suomalainen and Simo Ali-Löytty and Robert Piché},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1709.02437},
year = {2017}
}