Real-time indoor positioning and route guidance system by using beacons

Abstract

Real-time tracking of objects an indoor environment has become important in numerous industries, including shopping, logistics, advertising, and healthcare. This paper represents a smartphone-based real time indoor positioning and route guidance system that employs BLE beacons. The system's main goal is to track a target's real-time location, such as a smartphone user, and guide them in a specific direction. The system combines location data and some contextual of pedestrians' movement directions to assist pedestrians in navigating to their destinations, such as the building's exit. The system is consists of three components: beacon devices, a user's smartphone app that communicates with beacons and gives navigation guidance to users, and the building's floor plan database. Localisation approach based on the received signal strength indicator (RSSI) is used. In addition, a new building's floor plan based on database approach is proposed. The experimental results have shown that even with only two placed beacons, the proposed system could achieve satisfactory accuracy.