An evaluation of indoor location determination technologies

Abstract

The development of real-time locating systems (RTLS) has become an important add-on to many existing location aware systems. While GPS has solved most of the outdoor RTLS problems, it fails to repeat this success indoors. A number of technologies have been used to address the indoor tracking problem. The ability to accurately track the location of people indoors has many applications ranging from medical, military and logistical to entertainment. However, current systems cannot provide continuous real-time tracking of a moving target or lose capability when coverage is poor. The deployment of a real-time location determination system however is fraught with problems. To date there has been little research into comparing commercial systems on the market with regard to informing IT departments as to their performance in various aspects which are important to tracking devices and people in relatively confined areas. This article attempts to provide such a useful comparison by providing a review of the practicalities of installing certain location-sensing systems. We also comment on the accuracies achieved and problems encountered using the position-sensing systems.

Research on the Key Technology and Method of Indoor Localization Based on WLAN

“…Since TOA and AOA method has its own advantage and proper scope, this paper presents a TOA & AOA composite positioning method. This positioning method employs the angles and distances between the measured object and the measured APs and calculates the measured object spatial coordinates [10]. From the point of view of the number of measuring units, composite positioning method requires less measurement units than the TOA or AOA methods.…”

Blind MuseumTourer: A System for Self-Guided Tours in Museums and Blind Indoor Navigation

“…Different solutions to the problem of indoor positioning and navigation have been proposed which often prove not reliable enough [66]. The satellite GPS system used for outdoor navigation cannot be a reliable solution for indoor navigation due to the significant attenuation of the satellite signal inside buildings.…”

Capacitive User Tracking Methods for Smart Environments

“…Even if the video stream could not be fed outside the monitored room and would only be used, for example, for context analysis, the slightest risk of hacking and intervention by an outsider prevents most people from accepting cameras in such places. That is why there has been so much research into real-time location systems (RTLS) [18] and other alternative, wireless, positioning and activity sensing methods for monitoring people in indoor environments [3,16]. These include ultrasonic [24], radio frequency [37,38,44], optical [9,22] and inertial-sensor [15,55] based techniques that require the person to actively carry a device.…”