SmartFinder: Cloud-based self organizing localization for mobile smart devices in large-scale indoor facility

Abstract

In large-scale indoor facilities such as airports, train stations, factories, and hospitals, the locations of mobile smart devices provide important information for grasping the activity state of people and the utilization state of things. Consequently, many indoor localization systems for people and things have been proposed. However, such systems require a large amount of localization equipment or advanced measurements of environmental physical characteristics, and thus they strongly depend on the infrastructure for localization. In this paper, we propose SmartFinder as a solution with extremely low dependence on the infrastructure. This localization system applies our previously proposed Cloud-based Self-Organizing Localization to mobile smart devices, such as smartphones carried by people and BLE devices attached to things. SmartFinder can track the location of many mobile smart devices with only three anchor nodes and in real time.