Indoor positioning solutions take asset tracking beyond the reach of GPS signals.
Indoor positioning solutions use a range of technologies to locate people, assets, and other objects indoors, essentially acting as an “indoor GPS.” But while satellite-based positioning solutions cover the entire planet with a single (admittedly expensive) deployment, indoor positioning systems depend on hardware, typically fixed anchor points, in each covered location.
Existing indoor positioning solutions use Wi-Fi, Bluetooth , ultra-wide band (UWB), acoustic signals, and RFID to locate mobile tags, with varying accuracy, cost, power demand, and ease of deployment. With so many options and no clear front-runner, deciding which technology to invest in for a specific application has been challenging.
But there is good news. Here we look at one of the first indoor positioning technologies to tick all of the boxes:
Sub-meter accuracy
Ultra-low power consumption
Cost effective
Relatively quick and simple deployment
Bluetooth indoor positioning
Bluetooth indoor positioning is among the most promising technologies for scaling up indoor tracking in a wide range of use cases including logistics, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, and in warehouses and smart buildings.
Enabled using Bluetooth direction finding, the main feature of Bluetooth 5.1, the technology uses the angle of arrival (AoA) of the Bluetooth signal trasmitted by a mobile tag at several fixed anchor points to trilaterate its indoor location in real-time with meter-level accuracy.
Benefits of Bluetooth for high precision indoor localization
Real-time meter level position accuracy indoors
Low cost, power efficient, easy to deploy hardware
Cross-vendor device compatibility thanks to technological standardization
Simplified adoption due to the prevalence of Bluetooth in existing devices
See Bluetooth indoor location tracking in action
With accuracies that compare to those achieved by advanced GPS receivers in open sky environments, Bluetooth indoor positioning systems can cover a critical blindspot shared by many real-time asset tracking solutions: the great indoors.
We conducted a proof of concept trial to test the technology in a real-world industrial warehouse.
White Paper: Getting started with high precision indoor positioning
This white paper provides an introduction to Bluetooth high precision indoor positioning, explores what is needed to implement solutions, and presents lessons learned trialing the technology in an industrial warehouse.
Bluetooth indoor positioning makes it possible to track the location of doctors and nurses as well as medical equipment in hectic hospital environments, saving precious time and money.
Access control
By identifying users and their vehicles and determining which side of a door they are located on, Bluetooth direction finding enables access control systems, for example, in offices buildings, factories, and warehouses.
Asset tracking in factories
Bluetooth indoor positioning brings sub-meter-level tracking accuracy to factory environments, ensuring that goods and tools are accounted for at all times.
Consumer devices
Consumer devices such as air purifiers or fans benefit from Bluetooth direction finding by ensuring that their users constantly remain in their focus.
Highlighted offering for indoor positioning solutions
Webinar: Bluetooth for High Precision Indoor Positioning
Interested in learning more about accurate indoor positioning systems? Bluetooth direction finding, introduced with Bluetooth 5.1, lets users locate assets, people, and anything else indoors with meter-level accuracy, paving the way for new indoor positioning use cases and business models.
Bluetooth Indoor Positioning
Bluetooth direction finding, introduced with Bluetooth 5.1, lets users locate assets, people, and anything else indoors with meter-level accuracy, paving the way for new indoor positioning use cases and business models.
