Indoor Location Technology

Procedia Computer Science

The complex way radio waves propagate indoors, leads to the derivation of location using fingerprinting techniques. In this cases, location is computed relying on WiFi signals strength mapping. Recent Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) provides new opportunities to explore positioning. Indoor location identification plays a fundamental role as a business and personal level. At a business level, indoor location pinpointing where GPS signal is nonexistent is used to advise users and send push notifications (e.g., stores publicity, guide persons with special needs, or even for emergency evacuation). In this work is studied how BLE beacons radio signals can be used for indoor location scenarios, as well as their precision. The proposed study is performed inside the campus of Viseu Polytechnic Institute, using hundreds of students, each with his smartphone, as proof of concept. Experimental results show that BLE allows having less than 1.5 meters error approximately 90% of the times. c

2000

This paper presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of Cricket, a location-support system for in-building, mobile, locationdependent applications. It allows applications running on mobile and static nodes to learn their physical location by using listeners that hear and analyze information from beacons spread throughout the building. Cricket is the result of several design goals, including user privacy, decentralized administration, network heterogeneity, and low cost. Rather than explicitly tracking user location, Cricket helps devices learn where they are and lets them decide whom to advertise this information to; it does not rely on any centralized management or control and there is no explicit coordination between beacons; it provides information to devices regardless of their type of network connectivity; and each Cricket device is made from off-the-shelf components and costs less than U.S. $10. We describe the randomized algorithm used by beacons to transmit information, the use of concurrent radio and ultrasonic signals to infer distance, the listener inference algorithms to overcome multipath and interference, and practical beacon configuration and positioning techniques that improve accuracy. Our experience with Cricket shows that several location-dependent applications such as in-building active maps and device control can be developed with little effort or manual configuration.

IEEE Communications Magazine, 2002

This article presents an overview of the technical aspects of the existing technologies for wireless indoor location systems. The two major challenges for accurate location finding in indoor areas are the complexity of radio propagation and the ad hoc nature of the deployed infrastructure in these areas. Because of these difficulties a variety of signaling techniques, overall system architectures, and location finding algorithms are emerging for this application. This article provides a fundamental understanding of the issues related to indoor geolocation science that are needed for design and performance evaluation of emerging indoor geolocation systems.

Computer, 2004

IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, 2015

This paper describes the design and the realization of a low frequency AC-magnetic-field-based indoor positioning system. The system operation is based on the principle of inductive coupling between wire loop antennas. Specifically, due to the characteristics of the AC artificially generated magnetic fields, the relation between the induced voltage and the distance is modeled with a linear behavior in a bi-logarithmic scale when a configuration with coplanar, thus equally oriented, antennas is used. In this case the distance between a transmitting antenna and a receiving one is estimated using measurements of the induced voltage in the latter. For a high operational range, the system makes use of resonant antennas tuned at the same nominal resonant frequency. The quality factors act as antenna gain increasing the amplitude of the induced voltage. The low operating frequency is the key factor for improving robustness against non-line-of-sight (NLOS) conditions and environment influences with respect to other existing solutions. The realized prototype, which is implemented using off-theshelf components, exhibits an average and maximum positioning error respectively lower than 0.3 m and 0.9 m in an indoor environment over a large area of 15 m × 12 m in NLOS conditions. Similar performance is obtained in an outdoor environment over an area of 30 m × 14 m. Furthermore, the system does not require any type of synchronization between the nodes and can accommodate an arbitrary number of users without additional infrastructure. Index Terms-Magnetic indoor positioning system, magnetic fields, mutual coupling, position measurement, resonators, wire loop antenna. I. INTRODUCTION OSITIONING of users such as robots, people, vehicles or other objects associated to a mobile receiver is a common issue in many practical applications such as domotics, assisted navigation of buildings, and health systems. The increasing request has led to an increasing interest for developing indoor positioning systems (PSs). Moreover, the development of new PSs is catalyzed by the existence of outdoor Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) challenged environments and applications requiring better than GNSS accuracy without added costs of a differential GPS receiver.

Frontiers in Public Health

Procedia Computer Science

Recent Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons provide new opportunities to explore positioning. Beacon positioning determination using current approaches is supported by pre-calculated formulas, for generic beacons, whereas the position can be accurately estimated with a low error up to a small distance; or based on fingerprinting the signal for the given space. In both cases, the accuracy variate depending on hardware specifications and other conditions such as beacon brand, wrap material, temperature, wind, location, surrounding interference, battery strength, among others. This paper introduces a method for beacon-based positioning, based on signal strength measurements at key distances for each beacon. This method allows for different beacon types, brands, and conditions. Depending on each situation (i.e., hardware and location) it is possible to adapt the distance measuring curve to minimize errors and support higher distances, while at the same time keeping good precision. Moreover, this paper also presents a comparison with traditional positioning method, using formulas for distance estimation, and then position triangulation. Performed tests took place at the library of the campus of the Polytechnic Institute of Viseu. Experimental results show that the proposed position technique has 13.2% better precision than triangulation, for distances up to 10 meters. c

Apart from being extremely dependent on GNSS (GPS, GLONASS, GALLILEO, etc.) technologies for outdoor positioning, an indoor positioning technology can vary mainly due to dynamic environment. Indoor positioning systems in past year are becoming more and more popular because it’s easier to deploy than ever, due to the growing use of the smartphones. This small devices are equipped with sensors which can sense move, inclination, speed, signal strength … Despite of that, the domination of single indoor technology has not yet being achieved, thus the paper will present each technology, principles and approaches, it will be pointed out some system combinations and it will present some available products as examples. Finally, some pros and cons during research are noted as well as prediction in terms of domination of certain systems.

Journal of Sensors, 2017

Indoor positioning systems (IPS) use sensors and communication technologies to locate objects in indoor environments. IPS are attracting scientific and enterprise interest because there is a big market opportunity for applying these technologies. There are many previous surveys on indoor positioning systems; however, most of them lack a solid classification scheme that would structurally map a wide field such as IPS, or omit several key technologies or have a limited perspective; finally, surveys rapidly become obsolete in an area as dynamic as IPS. The goal of this paper is to provide a technological perspective of indoor positioning systems, comprising a wide range of technologies and approaches. Further, we classify the existing approaches in a structure in order to guide the review and discussion of the different approaches. Finally, we present a comparison of indoor positioning approaches and present the evolution and trends that we foresee.

2007

This paper describes the current efforts to develop an open source, privacy sensitive, location determination software component for mobile devices. Currently in mobile computing, the ability of a mobile device to determine its own location is becoming increasingly desirable as the usefulness of such a feature enhances many commercial applications. There have been numerous attempts to achieve this from both the network positioning perspective and also from the wireless beacon angle not to mention the integration of GPS into mobile devices. There are two important aspects to consider when using such a system which are privacy and cost. This paper describes the development of a software component that is sensitive to these issues. The ICiNG Location Client (ILC) is based on some pioneering work carried out by the Place Lab Project at Intel. (Hightower et al., 2006) The ILC advances this research to make it available on mobile devices and attempts to integrate GSM, WiFi, Bluetooth and ...