Evaluation of Different Radio-Based Indoor Positioning Methods

Abstract: Today, positioning with GPS and the advantages this entails are almost infinitive, which means that the technology can be utilized in a variety of applications. Unfortunately, there exists a lot of limitations in conjunction with the signals from the GPS can’t reach inside e.g. buildings or underground. This means that an alternative solution that works indoors needs to be developed. The report presents the four most common radio-based technologies, Bluetooth,Wi-Fi, UWB and RFID, which can be used to determine a position. These all have different advantages in cost, accuracy and latency, which means that there exist a number of different applications. The radio-based methods use the measurement techniques, RSSI, TOA, TDOA, Cell-ID, PD or AOA to gather data. The choice of measurement technique is mainly dependent of which radio-based method being used, since their accuracy depends on the quality of the measurements and the size of the detection area, which means that all measurement techniques have different advantages and disadvantages. The measurement data is processed with one of the positioning methods, LS, NLS, ML, Cell-ID, WC or FP, to estimate a position. The choice of positioning method also depends on the quality of the measurements in combination with the size of the detection area. To evaluate the different radio-based methods together with measurement techniques and positioning methods, accuracy, latency and cost are being compared. This is used as the basis for the choice of positioning method, since a general solution can get summarized by finding the least expensive approach which can estimate an unknown position with sufficiently high accuracy.