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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17 Mar 2021
TL;DR: In this article, a survey on automated contact tracing techniques using Bluetooth Low Energy is presented, focusing on preserving the privacy of users and identifying two major groups: systems that rely on a server for finding new infections and systems that distribute this process.
Abstract: To combat the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, many new ways have been proposed on how to automate the process of finding infected people, also called contact tracing. A special focus was put on preserving the privacy of users. Bluetooth Low Energy as base technology has the most promising properties, so this survey focuses on automated contact tracing techniques using Bluetooth Low Energy. We define multiple classes of methods and identify two major groups: systems that rely on a server for finding new infections and systems that distribute this process. Existing approaches are systematically classified regarding security and privacy criteria.
27 citations
16 Apr 2018
TL;DR: A comprehensive system for the efficient management and monitoring of workers' evacuation in the context of factories and office buildings and supports rescuers to reach emergency sources and workers in trouble and to coordinate emergency operations is presented.
Abstract: In the context of building evacuation, for instance in case of fire or other emergency situations, the immediate identification of the evacuation path is of vital importance. Panic, lack of knowledge of the building, poor emergency signaling, obstructed evacuation paths are the common causes of inefficient evacuation, with possible tremendous consequences. The paper presents a comprehensive system for the efficient management and monitoring of workers' evacuation in the context of factories and office buildings. The system is composed of a central monitoring unit and a user app running on a mobile device. The monitoring unit acquires alert information (fire, smoke, etc.) from connected sensors deployed in the environment and communicates the position of such obstacles to the user app via the Wi-Fi network. Two versions of the user app have been designed, the former devoted to workers, the latter to rescuers. The worker app implements the indoor localization through received signal strength indication (RSSI) of purposely-deployed beacons and computes the best evacuation path planning, exploiting obstacle information from the central unit as well. Moreover, it communicates the worker's position to the central monitoring unit; in this way, a global real-time overview of the evacuation progress of all workers can be obtained and critical situations, such as trapped workers, can be promptly identified, thus guaranteeing more efficient rescue operations. The rescuer app supports rescuers to reach emergency sources and workers in trouble and to coordinate emergency operations. Despite the development of the proposed solution is still in progress, preliminary tests have demonstrated the effectiveness and usefulness of such an approach.
27 citations
Cites background or result from "Location Fingerprinting With Blueto..."
...Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) radio protocols (beacons in the following) provide new ways for indoor localization [16]....
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...Literature works [16] and [22] confirm the results of the performed experimental test....
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TL;DR: A 5G indoor positioning system is proposed for museums that utilizes unlicensed visible light of the electromagnetic spectrum to provide museum visitors with high-accuracy positioning, multiple forms of interaction services, and high-resolution multimedia delivery on a mobile device.
Abstract: Many features of 5G are definitely important to the broadcasting service, including diverse content services such as follow-me TV, video-on-demand, but also gaming, Virtual reality (VR) and Augmented reality (AR) and many others. Meanwhile, those services depend more and more on the user’s position accuracy, especially in indoor environment. With the increase of broadcasting data traffic indoors, to obtain a highly accurate position is becoming a challenge because of the impact of radio interference. In order to support a high-quality indoor broadcasting service, a high-accuracy positioning, radiation-free, and high-capacity communication system is urgently needed. In this paper, a 5G indoor positioning system is proposed for museums. It utilizes unlicensed visible light of the electromagnetic spectrum to provide museum visitors with high-accuracy positioning, multiple forms of interaction services, and high-resolution multimedia delivery on a mobile device. The geographic data and the location-related data integrated into the 5G New Radio (NR) waveform are detailed. A general-purpose system architecture is provided and some basic techniques to enhance system performance are also investigated. A preliminary demonstration is built in the laboratory environment. It supports over 45.25 Mbps data rate and a mean positioning error of 0.18 m.
26 citations
Additional excerpts
...terrestrial broadcasting (DTTB) [19]), Bluetooth [16], [20], RFID [21], Ultra-wideband (UWB) [13]–[17], ZigBee [14], etc....
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TL;DR: This work represents one of the first deployments of Bluetooth beacons in a university teaching and learning capacity and provides a starting point for others attempting to utilise beacon-enabled location-based services to enhance learner experiences.
Abstract: Considering the surge in e-learning growth over the last decade and the proliferation of mobile devices in the Bring Your Own Device generation, this paper reviews selected use cases of Bluetooth beacons in educational situations. We review the contribution of Bluetooth beacons to a mixed pedagogy that uses digital and physical learning spaces, and we discuss the pilot deployment of Bluetooth beacons at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, to enhance physical learning spaces. Our work represents one of the first deployments of Bluetooth beacons in a university teaching and learning capacity and provides a starting point for others attempting to utilise beacon-enabled location-based services to enhance learner experiences. The widespread adoption of beacon technology in educational institutions has not yet occurred, and the most common usage of beacon transmitters and systems in education is for attendance-taking and dissemination of teaching material. Mobile applications are constantly being developed to utilise the location-based services provided by beacons to enhance student learning and effectiveness. This paper also discusses the sustainability benefits of beacon systems, especially in the contexts of smart campus and smart city development.
25 citations
TL;DR: It is demonstrated that the improved conventional KNN algorithm can achieve very high positioning accuracy and is totally suitable for several specific 2-D indoor positioning applications.
Abstract: Enhancing the accuracy of indoor visible light positioning systems with simple, real-time, and stable methods is one of the interesting challenges in recent research. In this paper, a relatively minor mean positioning error of 8 mm and a 42-52% improvement in computational time could be achieved within a real space of 1.2 m $\\times1.2$ m $\\times1.2$ m by transcending the serious limitations of the traditional k-nearest neighbors (KNN) algorithm. These disadvantages (slow execution time, high error formation) are a result of finding the nearest neighbors from all the fingerprints, averaging the Euclidean distances, and the excessive passivity of the K value. To overcome the above limitations of KNN, we proposed a maximum received signal strength recognition (MRR) technique and weighted optimum KNN (WOKNN) algorithm, which is a combination of optimum KNN (OKNN) and weighted KNN (WKNN). While MRR was used to reduce the computational time, WOKNN was used to solve the remaining problems. Specifically, OKNN was used to automatically determine the best number of nearest neighbors for each position in the area under consideration, and WKNN helped improve the errors that come from the Euclidean distance averaging process. Based on positive experimental results and a meaningful comparison with various versions of KNN, we demonstrated that the improved conventional KNN algorithm can achieve very high positioning accuracy and is totally suitable for several specific 2-D indoor positioning applications.
25 citations
Cites methods from "Location Fingerprinting With Blueto..."
...114606 VOLUME 8, 2020 [18] J.-S. Jeon, Y. Kong, Y. Nam, and K. Yim, ‘‘An indoor positioning system using Bluetooth RSSI with an accelerometer and a barometer on a smartphone,’’ in Proc....
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...The RSS is a popular, simple approach that provides acceptable positioning error for indoor positioning applications [13]; This approach is also applied for other types of signals such as WIFI [15], [16], Bluetooth [17], [18], Lorawan [13], and Zigbee [19], [20]....
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...[17] R. Faragher and R. Harle, ‘‘Location fingerprinting with Bluetooth low energy beacons,’’ IEEE J. Sel....
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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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