Indoor positioning method using BITON and linear Kalman filter

This study proposes an indoor positioning system using the BITON algorithm, a linear Kalman filter (LKF), and beacons. A beacon is an indoor positioning device that uses Bluetooth low-energy technology. Indoor location-based services that use existing beacons provide information to adjacent devices in specific areas, such as shopping and sightseeing locations. When indoor location-based services are active, and beacons are installed in many areas, space-based services become important. In space-based services, it is important to improve the accuracy of user locations, which are calculated using information from the beacon. In this paper, we propose a method for improving user positioning accuracy indoors using BITON and LKF. First, we analyze the characteristics of a beacon signal (with fading) and calculate a correction value for the received signal strength indication, from the predicted range. Because the beacon signal has nonlinear properties, the BITON algorithm is used to translate user movements into linear motion. The LKF algorithm uses the predicted user location and beacon coordinates to calculate the exact indoor location coordinates of a user. Additionally, when the proposed method is applied, indoor positioning results with mean errors of 0.504 and 0.6251 from the x- and y-coordinates can be confirmed.