Location Fingerprinting With Bluetooth Low Energy Beacons
TL;DR: This work provides a detailed study of BLE fingerprinting using 19 beacons distributed around a ~600 m2 testbed to position a consumer device, and investigates the choice of key parameters in a BLE positioning system, including beacon density, transmit power, and transmit frequency.
Abstract: The complexity of indoor radio propagation has resulted in location-awareness being derived from empirical fingerprinting techniques, where positioning is performed via a previously-constructed radio map, usually of WiFi signals. The recent introduction of the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) radio protocol provides new opportunities for indoor location. It supports portable battery-powered beacons that can be easily distributed at low cost, giving it distinct advantages over WiFi. However, its differing use of the radio band brings new challenges too. In this work, we provide a detailed study of BLE fingerprinting using 19 beacons distributed around a $\sim\! 600\ \mbox{m}^2$ testbed to position a consumer device. We demonstrate the high susceptibility of BLE to fast fading, show how to mitigate this, and quantify the true power cost of continuous BLE scanning. We further investigate the choice of key parameters in a BLE positioning system, including beacon density, transmit power, and transmit frequency. We also provide quantitative comparison with WiFi fingerprinting. Our results show advantages to the use of BLE beacons for positioning. For one-shot (push-to-fix) positioning we achieve $30\ \mbox{m}^2$ ), compared to $100\ \mbox{m}^2$ ) and < 8.5 m for an established WiFi network in the same area.
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TL;DR: This paper proposes a novel overlay protocol that employs duty-cycle scanning to guarantee the lifetime of the underlying beacon, while defining a set of scanning policies to increase the packet dissemination rate through the overlay mesh network.
Abstract: Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons are designed to operate for years on a coin-cell battery. However, the formation of a mesh network, overlaying on the existing Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons infrastructure, can severely degrade the lifetime of underlying beacons owing to the excessive current drawn by the scanning event. Even though we can sustain the lifetime of the underlying beacon with duty-cycle scanning, such duty-cycle scanning imposes another challenge to the overlay mesh in disseminating the packet. To this end, this paper proposes a novel overlay protocol that: 1) employs duty-cycle scanning to guarantee the lifetime of the underlying beacon, while 2) defining a set of scanning policies to increase the packet dissemination rate through the overlay mesh network. The duty-cycle scanning defines the scanning time slot based on the lowest feasible duty cycle unveiled through a comprehensive analysis of energy consumed by advertising and scanning events. The scanning policies, on the other hand, allow each node to explore all possible time slots before locking their scanning event to a particular time slot that is most likely to hear the incoming packet. Extensive experiments with practical implementation demonstrate the feasibility of our proposed overlay mesh for real-world use cases.
1 citations
01 Jan 2019
TL;DR: This paper explores three technologies: acoustic, visible light, and Bluetooth Low Energy to provide Location-Based Services (LBS) in museums or archaeological sites and shows a robust detection radius around the acoustic and BLE beacons.
Abstract: This paper explores three technologies: acoustic, visible light, and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to provide Location-Based Services (LBS) in museums or archaeological sites. Acoustic and visible light beacons have been specifically designed, whereas for BLE a commercial beacon has been chosen. Also, a mobile phone application has been developed which implements the identification algorithms for each proposed technology. Once the artwork has been identified, its information is displayed on the mobile phone screen. A set of experimental tests has been carried out in order to evaluate the performance of each technology. Results have shown a robust detection radius of 1.5 m around the acoustic and BLE beacons, while this radius decreases to 0.5 m for the visible light beacon. Results have also revealed the existence of some phenomena that worsen the detection quality in certain areas. This should be addressed in an evolved version of this work.
1 citations
Cites background from "Location Fingerprinting With Blueto..."
...RSSI decreases with the square of the distance from the source, but indoors multipath effect and emission frequency changes make measurements disperse and time variant [1]....
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01 Jul 2018
TL;DR: The purpose of this study is to use beacon technology to develop an active data feedback system that could improve the lack of existing inventory and logistics curriculum training in colleges.
Abstract: The purpose of this study is to use beacon technology to develop an active data feedback system. Manufacturers are cooperators who can continue to share realistic data about inventories and logistics with colleges, and colleges can improve the inventory and logistics curriculum training based on these realistic data. The system involved three parts, including the tag of Bluetooth low energy (BLE) technology, a smartphone APP as a reader, and a cloud database. When the tag is installed on a shelf of a warehouse or logistics facility, it can continue to actively collect all of the changing data about inventories and logistics and feed it back to the cloud database. The system focuses on active data feedback. Therefore, it is impossible to cause a heavy loading on manufacturers. When students access the cloud database, they can use these real data to learn how establish a fit inventory management approach and logistics decision. Thus, the system could help colleges to train students on practical abilities in inventory and logistics curriculum. Therefore, the system could improve the lack of existing inventory and logistics curriculum training.
1 citations
07 Nov 2017
TL;DR: Results demonstrate that, using different devices for both offline and online phase, RSS differences, Euclidean distance and comparing fingerprints with Weighted k-Nearest Neighbours (WKNN) algorithm, the system is able to position users with reasonable values of accuracy and precision.
Abstract: This paper presents a study of the impact of dynamic factors on indoor positioning. A positioning system is presented that provides advanced information services based on two subsystems: Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). The first subsystem was intended to position users with not very high levels of accuracy and precision, but not too far from reality, and the second one was intended to position users with greater precision. It is designed for use in stations and terminals of public transportation systems in which the conditions are “hostile” or unfavourable. Experimental results demonstrate that, using different devices for both offline and online phase, RSS differences, Euclidean distance and comparing fingerprints with Weighted k-Nearest Neighbours (WKNN) algorithm, the system is able to position users with reasonable values of accuracy and precision: for Wi-Fi, with only 3 samples, depending on the orientation and compared with 3 neighbours, an average accuracy between 4.15 and 4.58 m and a precision in the range 4–7 m or less 90% of the time were obtained; for BLE, best accuracy results were obtained by comparison with 2 neighbours, giving a position error of 1.59 m and a CDF value of 2.83 m or less 90% of the time.
1 citations
Cites background or methods from "Location Fingerprinting With Blueto..."
...[11] conducted a detailed scene analysis study using proximity and k-Nearest Neighbours (KNN) algorithm with the aggregation of the 3 BLE advertising channels; they also provide quantitative comparison with WiFi fingerprinting....
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...without individually distinguishing BLE advertising channels 37, 38 and 39, therefore, in this case it was not possible to carry out a study of the impact of the number of samples because it is not guaranteed that each fingerprint contains one reading on each of the channels [11]....
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Journal Article•
TL;DR: This paper presents the requirements, algorithmic design, prototypical implementation, real-world use case, and evaluation setting for BeaT, a privacy-friendly solution that tracks user locations without GPS and gives users full control over the time and scope of data collection.
Abstract: Customers use smart devices to share their location data with service providers to co-create personalized, location-based services. However, mobile apps that record movement profiles not only yield value-added service but also bear potential for abuse. Especially apps utilizing GPS-based tracking pose a privacy risk because they could–once enabled–unnoticeably record data in private situations. In response, we developed a privacy-friendly solution, called BeaT, that tracks user locations without GPS and gives users full control over the time and scope of data collection. We leverage Bluetooth Beacon technology to confine the perimeter in which tracking takes place. This paper presents the requirements, algorithmic design, prototypical implementation, real-world use case, and evaluation setting for BeaT.
1 citations
References
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01 Nov 2007
TL;DR: Comprehensive performance comparisons including accuracy, precision, complexity, scalability, robustness, and cost are presented.
Abstract: Wireless indoor positioning systems have become very popular in recent years. These systems have been successfully used in many applications such as asset tracking and inventory management. This paper provides an overview of the existing wireless indoor positioning solutions and attempts to classify different techniques and systems. Three typical location estimation schemes of triangulation, scene analysis, and proximity are analyzed. We also discuss location fingerprinting in detail since it is used in most current system or solutions. We then examine a set of properties by which location systems are evaluated, and apply this evaluation method to survey a number of existing systems. Comprehensive performance comparisons including accuracy, precision, complexity, scalability, robustness, and cost are presented.
4,123 citations
"Location Fingerprinting With Blueto..." refers background in this paper
...Indoor positioning is a mature research field, with many proposed technologies and techniques—comprehensive overviews can be found in [2], [18], [19]....
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06 Jun 2005
TL;DR: The Horus system identifies different causes for the wireless channel variations and addresses them and uses location-clustering techniques to reduce the computational requirements of the algorithm and the lightweight Horus algorithm helps in supporting a larger number of users by running the algorithm at the clients.
Abstract: We present the design and implementation of the Horus WLAN location determination system. The design of the Horus system aims at satisfying two goals: high accuracy and low computational requirements. The Horus system identifies different causes for the wireless channel variations and addresses them to achieve its high accuracy. It uses location-clustering techniques to reduce the computational requirements of the algorithm. The lightweight Horus algorithm helps in supporting a larger number of users by running the algorithm at the clients.We discuss the different components of the Horus system and its implementation under two different operating systems and evaluate the performance of the Horus system on two testbeds. Our results show that the Horus system achieves its goal. It has an error of less than 0.6 meter on the average and its computational requirements are more than an order of magnitude better than other WLAN location determination systems. Moreover, the techniques developed in the context of the Horus system are general and can be applied to other WLAN location determination systems to enhance their accuracy. We also report lessons learned from experimenting with the Horus system and provide directions for future work.
1,631 citations
"Location Fingerprinting With Blueto..." refers background in this paper
...Here the focus is on radio positioning, specifically using the empirical fingerprinting techniques [3], [15], [17], [22] that avoid the need to model the complex radio propagation environment indoors by patternmatching to a previously surveyed map of radio signal strengths....
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TL;DR: It is concluded that PDR techniques alone can offer good short- to medium- term tracking under certain circumstances, but that regular absolute position fixes from partner systems will be needed to ensure long-term operation and to cope with unexpected behaviours.
Abstract: With the continual miniaturisation of sensors and processing nodes, Pedestrian Dead Reckoning (PDR) systems are becoming feasible options for indoor tracking. These use inertial and other sensors, often combined with domain-specific knowledge about walking, to track user movements. There is currently a wealth of relevant literature spread across different research communities. In this survey, a taxonomy of modern PDRs is developed and used to contextualise the contributions from different areas. Techniques for step detection, characterisation, inertial navigation and step-and-heading-based dead-reckoning are reviewed and compared. Techniques that incorporate building maps through particle filters are analysed, along with hybrid systems that use absolute position fixes to correct dead-reckoning output. In addition, consideration is given to the possibility of using smartphones as PDR sensing devices. The survey concludes that PDR techniques alone can offer good short- to medium- term tracking under certain circumstances, but that regular absolute position fixes from partner systems will be needed to ensure long-term operation and to cope with unexpected behaviours. It concludes by identifying a detailed list of challenges for PDR researchers.
749 citations
"Location Fingerprinting With Blueto..." refers background in this paper
...fingerprints with other sources to form hybrid systems, many of which are based on the idea of Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) [10], [16] being applied to pedestrian dead reckoning [13]....
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01 Feb 2000
TL;DR: This paper analyzes shortcomings of the basic system, develops and evaluates solutions to address these shortcomings, and describes several new enhancements, including a novel access point-based environmental profiling scheme, and a Viterbi-like algorithm for continuous user tracking and disambiguation of candidate user locations.
Abstract: We address the problem of locating users inside buildings using a radio-frequency (RF) wireless LAN. A previous paper presented the basic design and a limited evaluation of a user-location system we have developed. In this paper, we analyze shortcomings of the basic system, and develop and evaluate solutions to address these shortcomings. Additionally, we describe several new enhancements, including a novel access point-based environmental profiling scheme, and a Viterbi-like algorithm for continuous user tracking and disambiguation of candidate user locations. Using extensive data collected from our deployment, we evaluate our system’s performance over multiple wireless LAN technologies and in different buildings on our campus. We also discuss significant practical issues that arise in implementing such a system. Our techniques are implemented purely in software and are easily deployable over a standard wireless LAN.
608 citations
01 Jun 2010
TL;DR: NTP version 4 (NTPv4), which is backwards compatible with NTP version 3 (N TPv3), described in RFC 1305, as well as previous versions of the protocol, are described.
Abstract: The Network Time Protocol (NTP) is widely used to synchronize computer
clocks in the Internet. This document describes NTP version 4 (NTPv4),
which is backwards compatible with NTP version 3 (NTPv3), described in
RFC 1305, as well as previous versions of the protocol. NTPv4 includes
a modified protocol header to accommodate the Internet Protocol
version 6 address family. NTPv4 includes fundamental improvements in
the mitigation and discipline algorithms that extend the potential
accuracy to the tens of microseconds with modern workstations and fast
LANs. It includes a dynamic server discovery scheme, so that in many
cases, specific server configuration is not required. It corrects
certain errors in the NTPv3 design and implementation and includes an
optional extension mechanism. [STANDARDS-TRACK]
605 citations
"Location Fingerprinting With Blueto..." refers methods in this paper
...Before each experiment, each clock was manually synchronized using a Network Time Protocol (NTP) server [20]....
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