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 presents an expansion of the range of technologies and methodologies for assisting the visually impaired, providing readers and researchers with a more recent version of what was done and the advantages and disadvantages of each approach to guide reviews and discussions about these topics.
Abstract: Technologies and techniques of location and navigation are advancing, allowing greater precision in locating people in complex and challenging conditions. These advances have attracted growing interest from the scientific community in using indoor positioning systems (IPSs) with a higher degree of precision and fast delivery time, for groups of people such as the visually impaired, to some extent improving their quality of life. Much research brings together various works that deal with the physical and logical approaches of IPSs to give the reader a more general view of the models. These surveys, however, need to be continuously revisited to update the literature on the features described. This paper presents an expansion of the range of technologies and methodologies for assisting the visually impaired in previous works, providing readers and researchers with a more recent version of what was done and the advantages and disadvantages of each approach to guide reviews and discussions about these topics. Finally, we discuss a series of considerations and future trends for the construction of indoor navigation and location systems for the visually impaired.
45 citations
Cites background or methods from "Location Fingerprinting With Blueto..."
...For example, Faragher and Luo used internal positioning based on triangulation [58,133]....
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...Bluetooth is a ireless co unication technology that uses infor ation that is digitally incorporated into radio frequency signals [58,61]....
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...BLE devices allow fixed emitters to run on batteries for several months or even years [58]....
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...The values obtained can be used to estimate the position without calculating any measure of reach at an anchor node [58,59]....
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...Bluetooth is a wireless communication technology that uses information that is digitally incorporated into radio frequency signals [58,61]....
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01 Jan 2017
TL;DR: This work improves over a traditional regression- based localization approach by introducing a novel, graph-based localization method using Pedestrian Dead Reckoning (PDR) and particle filter, and studies with users show the impact that the increased accuracy has on the usability of the navigation application for the visually impaired.
Abstract: Methods that provide accurate navigation assistance to people with visual impairments often rely on instrumenting the environment with specialized hardware infrastructure. In particular, approaches that use sensor networks of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons have been shown to achieve precise localization and accurate guidance while the structural modifications to the environment are kept at minimum. To install navigation infrastructure, however, a number of complex and time-critical activities must be performed. The BLE beacons need to be positioned correctly and samples of Bluetooth signal need to be collected across the whole environment. These tasks are performed by trained personnel and entail costs proportional to the size of the environment that needs to be instrumented. To reduce the instrumentation costs while maintaining a high accuracy, we improve over a traditional regression-based localization approach by introducing a novel, graph-based localization method using Pedestrian Dead Reckoning (PDR) and particle filter. We then study how the number and density of beacons and Bluetooth samples impact the balance between localization accuracy and set-up cost of the navigation environment. Studies with users show the impact that the increased accuracy has on the usability of our navigation application for the visually impaired.
44 citations
Cites background from "Location Fingerprinting With Blueto..."
...Existing work examine how deployment parameters and signal settings influence localization accuracy [15]....
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TL;DR: In this paper, an LF positioning method with mmWave is proposed, which is named direction of arrival (DoA)-LF, and it is proved that mmWave can reduce the positioning error due to the fact that mm Wave has larger path loss exponent and smaller variance of shadow fading compared with low frequency signals.
Abstract: Location fingerprint (LF) has been widely applied in indoor positioning. However, the existing studies on LF mostly focus on the fingerprint of Wi-Fi below 6 GHz, bluetooth, ultra wideband, and so on. The LF with millimeter-wave (mmWave) was rarely addressed. Since mmWave has the characteristics of narrow beam, fast signal attenuation, and wide bandwidth, and so on, the positioning error can be reduced. In this paper, an LF positioning method with mmWave is proposed, which is named direction of arrival (DoA)-LF. Besides received signal strength indicator of access points (APs), the fingerprint database contains DoA information of APs, which is obtained via DoA estimation. Then the impact of the number of APs, the interval of reference points, the channel model of mmWave and the error of DoA estimation algorithm on positioning error is analyzed with Cramer-Rao lower bound. Finally, the proposed DoA-LF algorithm with mmWave is verified through simulations. The simulation results have proved that mmWave can reduce the positioning error due to the fact that mmWave has larger path loss exponent and smaller variance of shadow fading compared with low frequency signals. Besides, accurate DoA estimation can reduce the positioning error.
44 citations
Cites background from "Location Fingerprinting With Blueto..."
...bluetooth low energy (BLE) subsystem, which is ‘‘designed for machine type communication’’ [3], BLE devices will be more and more dense in buildings....
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01 Sep 2018
TL;DR: A two-step model-based indoor positioning algorithm based on Bluetooth Low-Energy, a pervasive and energy efficient standard protocol, tailored to reduce the computational effort and target real-time execution on an embedded platform, demonstrating a limited loss of performance.
Abstract: After several decades of both market and scientific interest, indoor positioning is still a hot and not completely solved topic, fostered by the advancement of technology, pervasive market penetration of mobile devices and novel communication standards. In this work, we propose a two-step model-based indoor positioning algorithm based on Bluetooth Low-Energy, a pervasive and energy efficient standard protocol. In the first (i.e. ranging) step a Kalman Filter (KF) performs the fusion of both RSSI and Time-of-Flight measurement data. Thus, we demonstrate the benefit of not relying only on RSSI, comparing ranging performed with or without the help of ToF. In the second (i.e. positioning) step, the distance estimates from multiple anchors are combined into a quadratic cost function, which is minimized to determine the coordinates of the target node in a planar reference frame. The proposed solution is tailored to reduce the computational effort and target real-time execution on an embedded platform, demonstrating a limited loss of performance. The paper presents an experimental setup and discusses meaningful results, demonstrating a robust BLE-based indoor positioning solution for embedded systems.
44 citations
Cites background from "Location Fingerprinting With Blueto..."
...A well-known approach to mitigate the effect of severe and hardly predictable multi-path and Non-Line-Of-Sight (NLOS) conditions is fingerprinting [12], [5]....
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...localization is not new [3], [4], in the past this technology was much less used than Wi-Fi due to range limitations, long scanning times and power consumption issues [5]....
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TL;DR: The experimental results show that the proposed 3-D-LBMS is proved to achieve meterlevel 2-D positioning accuracy and submeter level3-D altitude estimation accuracy in typical indoor environments.
Abstract: Indoor wireless localization using Bluetooth low energy (BLE) beacons has attracted considerable attention due to its extensive distribution and low cost properties. This article proposes a novel 3-D indoor localization algorithm which uses the combination of BLE and multiple sensors (3D-LBMS). The inertial navigation system (INS) and pedestrian dead reckoning (PDR) mechanizations are combined for accurate heading and speed estimation, which contains a multilevel constraints-based quasistatic magnetic field (QSMF) detection algorithm. In addition, dynamic-time-warping (DTW)-based BLE landmark detection algorithm is proposed to provide absolute 3-D location reference to multiple sensors-based positioning method, and the detected BLE landmark points are also used to calibrate the parameter of step-length calculation. Finally, the adaptive unscented Kalman filter (AUKF) is applied to fuse the results of INS/PDR mechanizations, QSMF and locations of detected BLE landmarks to achieve accurate and concrete multisource-based 3-D indoor localization performance. The experimental results show that the proposed 3-D-LBMS is proved to achieve meterlevel 2-D positioning accuracy and submeter level 3-D altitude estimation accuracy in typical indoor environments.
44 citations
Cites methods from "Location Fingerprinting With Blueto..."
...Faragher and Harle [28] proposed a fingerprint-based localization algorithm using RSSI acquired from local BLE nodes....
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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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