A novel architecture using iBeacons for localization and tracking of people within healthcare environment

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) can help healthcare facilities to transform the experience for both the staff and patients. IoT can facilitate novel solutions for a classic problem, which is the real-time tracking of patients and staff. In this work, an architecture for real-time tracking using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and iBeacons in hospitals is proposed. The proposed system is to locate not only humans but also other facilities such as medicines. It consists of four different frameworks: server communication, user interaction, cross-platform communication and indoor localization. A wearable BLE-enabled device or any smartphone can be used in our system. The first stage of the tracking system is setting up and calibrating the BLE iBeacons for initialization. Then the Received Signal Strength is collected from the BLE-enabled devices carried by users. These data are analyzed and calculated using our improved Least Square Estimation approach to estimate the actual location of users. Experimental results show that in a crowded environment, our tracking system achieves resolutions of the order of 12cm. This will be further integrated with other sensors such as accelerometer or heart rate monitor to improve the real-time healthcare monitoring experience.