Improving Indoor Localization Using Bluetooth Low Energy Beacons

Abstract

The paper describes basic principles of a radio-based indoor localization and focuses on the improvement of its results with the aid of a new Bluetooth Low Energy technology. The advantage of this technology lies in its support by contemporary mobile devices, especially by smartphones and tablets. We have implemented a distributed system for collecting radio fingerprints by mobile devices with the Android operating system. This system enables volunteers to create radio-maps and update them continuously. New Bluetooth Low Energy transmitters (Apple uses its “iBeacon” brand name for these devices) have been installed on the floor of the building in addition to existing WiFi access points. The localization of stationary objects based on WiFi, Bluetooth Low Energy, and their combination has been evaluated using the data measured during the experiment in the building. Several configurations of the transmitters’ arrangement, several ways of combination of the data from both technologies, and other parameters influencing the accuracy of the stationary localization have been tested.

A State-of-the-Art Survey of Indoor Positioning and Navigation Systems and Technologies

“…Bluetooth devices that are within the range of the installed Bluetooth sensors are able to connect to the sensors, thus resulting in the sensor's communication of the device's ID to the server via WLAN (Gu et al, 2009;Deak et al, 2012). The server computes the position of the device and sends the information to the application running on the device (Deak et al, 2012;Kriz, Maly, & Kozel, 2016).…”

“…However, the studies of Feldmann, Kyamakya, Zapater, and Lue (2003), Bekkelien (2012), Rida et al (2015) and Kriz et al (2016) showed that position computation also occurs in the mobile device, thus improving user privacy. In this case, the Bluetooth sensors communicate with the server that stores the position information of the sensors, but the server does not compute position.…”

“…In this case, the Bluetooth sensors communicate with the server that stores the position information of the sensors, but the server does not compute position. The application in the mobile device requests the position information from the Bluetooth sensors before computing the position of the device with the information (Rida et al, 2015;Kriz et al, 2016;Bekkelien, 2012). In addition, the sensors are placed within the environment in such a way as to make their operation optimal.…”

Practical Fingerprinting Localization for Indoor Positioning System by Using Beacons

“…An IPS research work using BLE and fingerprinting is presented in [4] where Wk-NN positioning method is used. The k-nearest fingerprints are found in a database by using the Euclidean distance between the measured RSSI and the referred one from the database.…”

Development of U-CITY Based Convergent Content System Using Bluetooth Low Energy Beacon Sensors

“…In addition, thanks to the development of network technologies and increases in smartphone prevalence rates, diverse near field communication network services have been rapidly increasing and diverse near field communication network technologies ranging from RFID/USN and Bluetooth technologies to smart embedded NFC have become issues now [2] [3]. Recently, Smart-CITY that can manage data in the entire city and provide IoT technologies through the construction of systems in entire society has been actively researched and developed and has been rapidly emerging as the next generation core technology aiming at the future city in the 21st century [4] [5]. However, the near field communication technology has shortcomings such as the fact that it can be applied to only some limited systems d ue to its constraint conditions in terms of storage spaces and distances to service areas and the fact that it requires simple data and information transmission [6] [7].…”