Enhanced Indoor Navigation System with Beacons and Kalman Filters

Abstract

Indoor positioning systems are used in a variety of applications from shopping malls and museums to subject monitoring and tracking. The reliability and usability of such systems are highly based on their accuracy as well as cost and ease of deployment. Although the Global Positioning System (GPS) is an accurate solution for outdoor use, it can not be used indoors. A popular approach is a wireless navigation system which makes use of Received Signal Strength Indicators (RSSI). However, signal propagation, as well as surrounding noise and a dynamic environment, can affect their performance. Recent advancements in Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices and the introduction of small and inexpensive beacons can alleviate the problem. In this work, we introduce an indoor navigation system with BLE beacons. To measure system accuracy an Android application was developed to collect the signal. Moreover, a Kalman filter was also developed within the application to improve the accuracy. Experimental results showed improvement of systems accuracy in three square topologies. The Kalman filter improved the accuracy up to 78.9%. while the experiments also show a correlation between the overall accuracy and how close BLE beacons are to each other.