Exploiting temporal variation of received radio signal strength for indoor human tracking: poster abstract

Indoor positioning is one of the key technologies for enabling location-aware applications. To the best of our knowledge, existing indoor positioning technologies are aimed at providing very high-accuracy location information, but are hindered by the need of a infrastructure with high installation and maintenance costs. In addition, their accuracy is usually highly variable and vulnerable to environmental changes or external interference. Thus, for applications of indoor human tracking, the practical considerations of choosing a suitable indoor positioning technique should be to provide adequate accuracy while also being economical. Based on this observation, our study presents an indoor, room-level tracking method characterized by an infrastructure with low costs to build and maintain. The user carries a mobile device that can determine his/her location with the help of Bluetooth beacons installed at the intersections between rooms and hallways. In contrast to traditional radio-fingerprint map and proximity approaches, in this study the mobile device tracks the user's moving direction and the temporal variation of the radio signal strength from nearby Bluetooth beacons, to determine when the device enters or leaves a given room or hallway. Therefore, by determining the sequence of a user's movements, his/her moving path can be recorded for indoor tracking or navigation.