An Analysis of the Accuracy of Bluetooth Low Energy for Indoor Positioning Applications

R. Faragher and R. Harle

Abstract:	This study investigated the impact of Bluetooth Low Energy devices in advertising/beaconing mode on fingerprint-based indoor positioning schemes. Early experimentation demonstrated that the low bandwidth of BLE signals compared to WiFi is the cause of significant measurement error when coupled with the use of three BLE advertising channels. The physics underlying this behaviour is verified in simulation. A multipath mitigation scheme is proposed and tested. It is determined that the optimal positioning performance is provided by 10Hz beaconing and a 1 second multipath mitigation processing window size. It is determined that a steady increase in positioning performance with fingerprint size occurs up to 7 ±1, above this there is no clear benefit to extra beacon coverage.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 27th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS+ 2014) September 8 - 12, 2014 Tampa Convention Center Tampa, Florida
Pages:	201 - 210
Cite this article:	Faragher, R., Harle, R., "An Analysis of the Accuracy of Bluetooth Low Energy for Indoor Positioning Applications," Proceedings of the 27th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS+ 2014), Tampa, Florida, September 2014, pp. 201-210.
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