Indoor Location-based Services Research Articles

Exploiting Bluetooth for deploying indoor LBS over a localisation infrastructure independent architecture

This paper presents an evaluation of using the low cost Bluetooth wireless technology, as a localisation technique, fitted in a lightweight approach for providing web-based location aware content through Java enabled handheld devices. This approach separates the positioning system from the content access mechanisms, while being generic and independent to the selection of the localisation technique, i.e., GPS, Bluetooth, etc. A test case application for Bluetooth enabled smart phones demonstrates the capacity of the approach, when combined with Bluetooth localisation, to provide location based content retrieval to the widest possible array of end users, while using their personal mobile devices, without the need to acquire and manage specially built user terminals. Useful results are also extracted for Bluetooth's behaviour, while being used as a localisation technique, with regard to the provided accuracy, usual inquiry time, possible interference from other wireless technologies and imposed hardware requirements.

Improvement of Kalman filters for WLAN based indoor tracking

Location Based Service (LBS) cannot be realized unless the location of the user is available. For indoor LBS, indoor positioning must be utilized and many researchers have been working on indoor positioning and tracking. For example, Extended Kalman filter (EKF) was exploited in Bluetooth based indoor positioning. Nowadays, WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network) is available virtually everywhere. Thus, WLAN based indoor positioning and tracking is more economical than Bluetooth based ones. This paper proposes a new WLAN based EKF indoor tracking method by extending existing Bluetooth based EKF positioning method. After analyzing the experimental results of it, we modified it to use K-NN method in the measurement stage of it. Then we propose to further improve the accuracy of indoor tracking by adjusting the parameter values referring to the map information. Experimental results comparing our method with other previous methods are discussed.

A Comparison of GIS Architectures for Implementing Indoor Location-based Services

This paper describes our experiences and lessons learnt in building a Geographic Information System (GIS) specifically designed for indoor location-based services. The proposed system was built by mashing-up commodity Open Source software and novel research prototypes realized within our labs. The overall approach relies on intense usage of standard web technologies and REpresentational State Transfer (REST) APIs as a way of enabling easy mashup of off-the-shelf and proprietary components. The key design and implementation aspects of our solution are described in detail, including a discussion on how we represented and augmented the concept of indoor location within our services, as well as on how we integrated them with commodity GIS services originally designed for outdoor scenarios. Further, we show different approaches for implementing client-side applications capable to interact with our indoor location-based services, and we report experimental results of test campaigns for evaluating the impact of those approaches on resource constrained devices.

A practical implementation of indoor location-based services using simple WiFi positioning

This work addresses the gap regarding existing indoor location-awareness support solutions and their integration in real-world smart spaces composed of commodity mobile/fixed devices. The work describes experiences and lessons learnt in designing and implementing support for indoor location-based services within the framework of our research about smart space application platforms. The extensive usage of web technologies in our smart space application platform enables easy creation and mash-up of location based services in both ad hoc settings and interconnected environments. As for the indoor location sensing, the solution relies on a novel technique that is suitable for easy large-scale deployments on top of existing IEEE 802.11 wireless network infrastructures. The technique, which is based on received signal strength (RSS), is suitable for RSS measurements and location calculation to take place at the mobile terminal with minimum setup work. In addition, it does not require any proprietary hardware devices to be installed in the target environment. Experimental results, referring to different categories of mobile devices (commercial smartphones, PDAs and laptops), show that the technique performs quite well on commodity mobile devices in terms of power consumption and time required to calculate the indoor location.

Legal Issues in Wireless Building Automation: an EU Perspective

Wireless building automation solutions promise to revolutionize home and commercial building management where fast deployment, increased building efficiency and optimal occupant comfort and convenience are top priorities. The ability to support people and/or device mobility, easy building reconfiguration, data, voice and video applications plus emerging indoor location-based services will unlock their future success. Wireless building automation systems are still at an early stage of development; however, as more and more building functions and applications are controlled electronically and wirelessly, constant occupant surveillance, tracking, personal profiling and security breaches, would raise deep concerns about the survival of privacy. Building privacy and security in the initial design should ensure that all necessary or required controls exist to protect access to and dissemination of personal information over the wireless building automation network. The applicability of the new EU regulatory framework for electronic communications and services will depend on the legal qualification of the network and services: private, public or a mixture of both.